Vaughan takes steps to be ‘age-friendly’ as senior population balloons

Vaughan ‘older adults’ team is working toward this goal to be achieved by 2021

Yorkregion.com
November 4, 2019
Dina Al-Shibeeb

Senior citizens make up the fastest-growing age group in the province, with those over 65 projected to number three million, or almost 20 per cent of the population, by 2023.

In response, the city of Vaughan is now taking steps to equip itself with an older-adults task force to deal with this rising tide and its needs.

The task force is chaired by Deputy Mayor and Local and Regional Coun. Mario Ferri, who told the Vaughan Citizen he isn’t “interested in going to meetings” but wants to see “results,” especially in “the next 15, 20 years, where the numbers (of seniors) are going to grow significantly.”

To make that happen, Angela Palermo, the city's recreation manager of community development and planning, gave the task force, which consists of seven older adults, a five-milestone plan for Vaughan to achieve an age-friendly designation in 2021.

“Basically, what we need from this committee is an actual recommendation, motion, that sort of starts the ball rolling to council,” Palermo told the task force at its Oct. 28 meeting. “We do need that from this committee to start the process,” she emphasized.

“Once we do that, we'll take the report to council, and we will likely get their approval to proceed in our designation.”

However, the task force’s immediate homework is to develop a background briefing document on the senior population for a consultant by observing what the current priorities are, and then hire a consultant and initiate a thorough study.

“As we go out in the community, in a way, you'll be ambassadors for this study at those community consultation sessions, and we'll go, we have enough money,” she told them.

So far, Palermo said the city has approved about $150,000 for this.

“I'm not saying we need to spend all of it on a consultant, but I think we do have enough money to do a very thorough community consultation for this study,” she further explained.

'This is real'

After looking at this milestones’ sheet, Ferri said, “I think this is real, and if we don’t take this opportunity now, we are going to miss it.”

The 71-year-old Ferri warned that “consequences are high for seniors,” adding, “I am there too.”

Ferri also talked about a “service house,” a concept that has been around of late and is already “part of the human service in Ontario.”

However, “nobody has perfected it yet” since it requires a high volume of seniors to make it sufficient but the population is getting there.

The concept is basically to have a one-stop centre where older adults can go for their health and legal needs among others.

“I am interested in a plan that will get us where we need to go,” he said. “We’ve talked about this service house, that’s something that we can work with region, province and the existing system because there is an existing system.”

Most importantly, it’s “how do we consolidate and collaborate, and how to change the model that the needs of the seniors are met today?” he added, to give some food for thought, before dispatching the task force to do its pondering and questioning.

The “strategy” to fulfil any future needs for this rising demographic came first from York Region. Last year, the region completed a report that “promotes the idea of doing the necessary to keep seniors at home instead of going to long-term care since it’s more expensive.”

“I didn’t want the report to collect dust,” Ferri said. “I decided to bring it to the city of Vaughan and work with the staff, and engage the region and the province at the right time to come up with the designation.”

One of the volunteers

As people age, their needs grow with them.

Darlene Share, a retired medical technologist, is one of the task force volunteers sitting alongside councillors and planners, who is witnessing this.

In the past decade, Share, 69, has long participated in classes offered by Vaughan’s recreation department for older adults, which range from Pilates to tai chi, and that’s where she started hearing stories from her peers.

Some expressed how some “can’t drive anymore or can’t get to these programs anymore,” especially of those who are older than her who come from a “proud generation” that doesn’t like to ask for help.

It’s no wonder why Share said at the meeting, “I have a voice for a lot of seniors.”

She says older adults have a myriad of issues ranging from transportation, where some can’t drive anymore, to health care to simply “dispelling” stereotypes that seniors are a “drain on society.”

“We got society where it’s now,” she said, adding “We are the senate the second sober thought.”