LINDA: So the next program that we have within the senior's hub is a telefriend program. With that program, for seniors that are unable to leave their home, we can arrange that the senior receives a telephone call once a day, once a month, once a week, from a regular caller just to keep them connected again with other people. Their caller will phone them and over time they tend to develop a relationship based on mutual interests. These calls become very important to the senior that's isolated and unable to get out of the home and also becomes important very often to the volunteer who's making the call. STEVE: Now let me ask another, I'll continue asking silly questions from time to time. Where's the family of these seniors? Why aren't they making the regular calls? LINDA: That's, that's a really good question Steve and the answer to that question is that the seniors that we serve very often don't have a lot of family around. Very often the senior's spouse is deceased and they may have lost many members in their own family and they have small families or their families may live anywhere around the world. So the seniors that we tend to see often have very limited support from family and friends in their own community. So it's the very isolated senior that does get involved with our program. Sometimes there are families involved but families are very busy and so seniors need more support than the family is able to offer. If for example, you think about a young family that has children of their own and there may be both spouses in the family are working and trying to raise children. So very often in those kinds of situations we can create a relationship with the senior that is very valued in addition to what the family is able to offer.
LINDA: So we have the telefriend program. Our telefriends who make the phone calls, I should comment at this point, that all of our volunteers are very well trained and so our telefriends understand how to be supportive and then how to report back to us if they have any concerns about what's happening for that senior. STEVE: And typically what is the age of the telefriend? The telefriend is a volunteer I take it. And of course you train the volunteer so that they can, as you say, be alert to any changes or any problems that might arise with the senior. But what's the typical age of your volunteer? LINDA: Our volunteers vary in age. We have some relatively young volunteers in terms of maybe 30s and 40s, but we have many volunteers that I would say are maybe retirement age so, 60 years old, 50 years old, but then we also have some volunteers that are seniors themselves. And that's the beauty of the program because our sort of guiding words are "we're a program of seniors helping seniors" and we try to empower our seniors. So when a senior comes in to our program and may be failing health wise or emotionally, we very often see improvements as a result of them becoming more physically active and becoming more attached to their community. In our program, if you are able to make a contribution you can bet we're going to ask you to make that contribution, and we very often see our seniors thriving because once again there's a sense of purpose restored to their life. So for our programs many times a senior will be asked to help out and that could be when they're back on their feet or when they're functioning well, that we ask them to become a telefriend for another senior. And the program works beautifully.
Steve: Well I can certainly see, you know, where that would be a very effective program for many, many different points of view and undoubtedly gives you a sense of satisfaction in that you are able to organize these activities and provide these services. So that's I think, 2 of your 10. Now let's, what else have you got up your sleeve? LINDA: Ok, we have a coffee group that meets weekly and this is for some of our more active seniors. This is located in Lower Lonsdale and it's for those seniors who are able to get there on their own, so for people who live in that Lower Lonsdale area and can actually walk to the venue of where we're hosting the coffee, we tend to keep it at a regular place and we have a couple of volunteers that will attend the coffee in the afternoon and we have a large group that come together and this provides something for seniors to look forward to and allows seniors to stay and do something actually in their community. So that's another thing that we do. Another one is our grocery shopping program. On Tuesday afternoons we take the bus out and we take a group of the frailest seniors out to do their own grocery shopping. Very much guided by the principle that we don't do for seniors anything that they can do for themselves so what we do is we create a safe environment and allow the seniors to do their own grocery shopping. So we'll pick them up in their homes, take them safely to one of the larger, more economical grocery stores on the North Shore and we will have volunteers on site to ensure that the seniors are being safe and if they need help lifting something that they're there to be lifted but the senior is guiding that grocery shopping for that day. Everyone heads back out on to the bus with all these bags of groceries so we have a number of volunteers to help us lift those in to the bus. And then each senior is delivered home and their groceries are delivered in to their home because very often we've found seniors are not purchasing enough food for themselves or healthy food for themselves because it's too heavy, it's too difficult for them to actually manage in to their home. So we've found that as a result of this seniors are eating better. Seniors are inviting friends over to share meals because they actually have enough food in their home to be able to do that so it's had a number of benefits. STEVE: That sounds like a really interesting program and I guess one of the things you'll wonder sometimes as useful and as wonderful as these services are, how many people in the community are not able to take advantage of these kinds of services? Are you just a drop in the ocean or how significant is the contribution?
