Community Matters Toronto
NEIGHBOURS HELPING NEIGHBOURS
Seniors Connect
About Seniors Connect
Community Matters is a grassroots initiative that grew from a common recognition of the importance and difficulty of adapting to life in this country.
With an emphasis on the support of new comer families and youth in St. James Town the issues faced by seniors are often overlooked. To overcome language and cultural differences is difficult in the best of circumstances. The opportunities for seniors, especially frail seniors, to interact with the community are extremely limited contributing to increasing isolation which can result in depression and in some cases suicide. There are about 2,000 seniors living in St James Town, many of them are low income and come from a variety of ethno-cultural groups.
There are no government services assisting seniors in the St James Town area. The policies and practices of nearby health and social services are often misunderstood. Seniors, their families and service providers report a lack of use of existing services, and that existing services have little relevance to the community. Hospitals report excess and unnecessary trips to Emergency Rooms. Seniors are not aware about available services and:
Cannot effectively communicate with service providers
Are afraid of going beyond the borders of St James Town to get help
Are not able to get groceries,
Cannot fix minor problems within the home,
Do not understand the importance of medication,
Are depressed.
Using a “ground up” approach to integrating cultures and developing effective neighbourhood services, our Community Matters serves to address these issues.
There is a general lack of well researched models of how to build “aging at home” models for seniors in multi-cultural, densely populated neighbourhoods. This project will address the needs of seniors “from the ground up” development of an independently sustained system of community and professional services.