HELPING SENIORS
Program benefits seniors in many ways.
As senior safety co-ordinator for the top end of Digby and area, Dawn Thomas visits lonely seniors, fills in some of the cracks that seniors fall through, and often connects the necessary dots for their care.
Thomas doesn’t work for the police, but she has an office at the RCMP station in Digby and she often consults with the police and has delivered cyber-safety programming alongside the police. Neither does Thomas work for health care or mental health services or the legal profession or the government, but she’s often making referrals, contacts, connections and presentations in each of those areas.
Thomas’s days are fractured into as many pieces as those that make up her role – a role that crosses lines between advocate and witness and hands-on helping.
“I love it that I have the flexibility and freedom to do what needs to be done,” she says during a visit with a senior. “This afternoon I’m working on a housing strategy for Bear River. Tomorrow I’m working with Digby Recreation and another day I might be presenting to the bar association in Halifax on what goes wrong with power-ofattorney documents.”
According to Thomas, this is what makes the program so great.
“Even though this program is now delivered across most of the province, the program is individual in each area – that’s why it works,” she says.
While Thomas works for a board of directors, her salary is split between the Town of Digby, Municipality of Digby and the Digby and Area Health Services Foundation.
The province recently committed $75,000 in grant money to every senior safety program across the province, over three years. While those funds were welcomed, that provincial money was also a source of concern for the frontline program co-ordinators.
“We were all kind of nervous when the government said it was going to do this multi-year funding. We were afraid we were going to be standardized or mandated, because the charm and the beauty and the access that our program has is so individual by area – if we were standardized across the province, it would no longer work,” says Thomas. “We’re traditionally funded by the community, so we can be responsive to the needs in the community where we serve, so what I’m doing here in Digby might be different than what is happening in the program in Kings County.”
Given the flexibility Thomas has from her board of directors, and the many gaps she witnesses in seniors living on their own, there are always grey areas in her work.
“It’s a weird line,” Thomas says. “I don’t do groceries, but if I go see someone who has no food, I have to do that. One time one of my clients fell and fractured her hip and she told the fire department to call me. She had no one else to call.”
Thomas also receives phone calls from family members and even utility companies.
“I received a phone call from the oil company saying they can’t continue to deliver oil to one of my clients’ homes because her oil barrel had holes in it,” she says. “I went out there and she had no hot water and no heat in the middle of winter. She didn’t want her family to know she was having this financial issue. I ended up calling her daughter, and we worked out a plan. It’s difficult. She was so worried she was going to be a burden.”
Thomas says the day-to-day job is stressful and she tries to avoid burnout, but it’s sometimes hard because she’s working alone and the need is so great.
“I need to be able to go home at night and lay my head on the pillow and know that people are going to be okay, that the right pieces are in place,” she says.
OTHER AGENCIES
Sometimes she places calls to other agencies – like Adult Protection – to ask for advice or even reassurance. But she also knows that many of the calls she receives come from other agencies when there is something required that their workers are not allowed to do. One of the frustrations Thomas says all agency workers share is their inability to communicate about their clients.
“We’re not allowed to communicate with each other – so they might ask me, ‘Do you know anything about this person?’ Or continuing care might say, ‘Have you been to Barton recently?’ and I’ll have to figure out what they’re talking about,” Thomas says. “Some agencies say they can’t function without me because I can put the client in the car and take him to the bank, so his power bills won’t be shut off. Nobody else can do that. Health care can’t do that, but they all know it has to be done. They’re as frustrated by that as I am.”
Thomas has helped organize meetings between agencies to discuss those issues and to brainstorm ideas on how to best manage communication and privacy concerns. However, she sometimes sees things that others might not recognize – like an abuse of power of attorney or domestic violence or early signs of dementia.
“When I started this job, 13 years ago, the intention was to keep people safe, so it was more about personal safety, home security, frauds and scams, having a safe place, protecting your identification, and now it’s a lot of health and home-related safety,” Thomas says. “I think all of the senior safety co-ordinators would say we’re now dealing with more dementia issues – people who are living in the community by themselves, people who don’t have doctors, people living in isolated rural communities who have problems with transportation or filling out forms or who are living in old houses that are falling apart around them.”
Thomas says part of the problem is there aren’t enough spaces in nursing homes, and while the government’s plan to keep people in their own homes is well-intentioned, it’s not always practical, especially in rural areas.
“Caregivers don’t always understand they have to make it work at home for as long as they can – so we see old people taking care of old people, spouses taking care of spouses and adult children taking care of their parents and their kids,” she says. “There is a lot more caregiver stress and caregiver burden now, so a lot of the time, it feels like we’re not just taking care of the seniors, we’re now taking care of their families.”
People also don’t always understand that seniors, who are of sound mind, are allowed to make their own choices – even if they’re bad or unusual.
“People are allowed to live in squalor, people are allowed to live without power,” Thomas says. “You can live in a bus on a mountaintop if you’re 85 years old if you want to, and people don’t understand that. People get upset because I don’t take them out of that bus or I don’t remove them from a situation the family doesn’t approve of, but I can’t if they’re of sound mind – people get to pick how they live.”
RECOGNIZING ABUSE
That being said, Thomas has intervened when necessary and however she could when she’s witnessed abuse firsthand. Given the abuses she’s witnessed and the actions she’s taken in the past, Thomas has, on three separate occasions, presented to the Nova Scotia Bar Association about power-of-attorney situations she’s seen firsthand.
“We sometimes only see situations when it goes to the police,” Thomas says. “A lot of times, the seniors don’t have the understanding or they don’t have the memory of signing documents or they don’t have the money to fight the situation because the money is already gone.”
“It’s sad. I know people are going into the banks and cleaning out accounts or even shutting accounts down and then the seniors don’t have any money,” she says. “It happens here, and either people don’t understand that they can’t do that or they’re deliberately ripping them off. I could tell you so many stories.”
Thomas has helped deliver cyber safety workshops with the RCMP, hosts a regular caregiver support group and organizes education sessions on power-ofattorney legalities that are delivered by family law lawyers.
“A power of attorney is the most important document you’re ever going to sign,” she says. “People need to know who to pick – don’t just pick your daughter because she’s your daughter. It’s okay to pick a neighbour, it’s okay to pick somebody else – someone you’ve known for a long time, someone who will do little tasks for you, someone who will stand up for your best interests in what you want.”
Thomas says her own ‘ outsider’ role allows her to take charge of situations, call banks, call the police, call members of the family – things other agency staff members are just not able or willing to do.
“We can walk into anybody’s situation, and that’s a good thing because many seniors are living at high risk of financial abuse or domestic violence,” she says. “I can take a police officer with me – I have that connection to the police which means if there is an abusive situation, I’m going to be safe too – so we’ll discuss the situation and make a plan.”
“I need to be able to go home at night and lay my head on the pillow and know that people are going to be okay, that the right pieces are in place.” — Dawn Thomas, senior safety co-ordinator
VISITING WITH SENIORS
On the day of this interview, Thomas was visiting a client in a rural community outside Weymouth. Melvina Campbell Bryant has previously lived in Nashville, Tennessee, San Antonio, Texas, Boston and Montreal, and will be 86 in May. Her diabetes has stolen much of her eyesight, and she now misses the warmth of the Texas sun and the independence offered by being able to drive her own car. However, Thomas says Campbell Bryant is one of the lucky seniors on her list because she has strong community support from a cousin who lives nearby, from her church congregation – and, of course, from Thomas herself.
“You look great,” Thomas says as she arrives at Campbell Bryant’s home.
“I think I look terrible,” Campbell Bryant says.
Thomas laughs, and gives Campbell Bryant a hug.
Campbell Bryant launches into a story of how the two met and the pair talk and laugh like old friends, while Thomas slides in the occasional purposeful question about the older woman’s health, her use of her stairs and the care being offered by other people in her life.
Thomas says sometimes the socialization part of her job becomes as important as the pointed questions designed to uncover cases of neglect or, even worse, elder abuse.
“I can’t keep up with all of the lonely people,” she says.
But Campbell Bryant asks her own pointed questions, as she probes what’s happening in Thomas’s personal life. Thomas says the boundaries between her professional and personal life are often blurred.
“She always wants to know what’s happening in my life,” Thomas says, laughing.
Thomas says listening to the stories and concerns shared by Campbell Bryant and other seniors on her client list gives her information to share with other agencies and the govern- ment in order to advocate for change.
“I can take information from people like Melvina and share it with other agencies,” Thomas says. “Things like moving the green bin to the other side of the road or having to move a mailbox. Those issues are huge to seniors and people sitting in offices often don’t realize how impactful those decisions are. What’s happening at the high level is often not connected to what’s happening on the ground.”
Thomas shares a story of an elderly man who was living in a trailer with plastic on the windows in winter, and whose paid caregivers were taking his money and leaving him without food.
“I got him set up with the hospital when there would be a doctor and a social worker there and as soon as he was eating properly and taking his meds, he was much better,” she says. “He’s now living in a boarding house, he’s got new glasses and he’s got new teeth because this guy isn’t taking his cheques anymore. He’s gardening and he’s happy.
“There’s so many stories. That’s one of the better-ending stories. Sometimes, they don’t end so well.”
Campbell Bryant shares her own stories – of how Thomas shovelled her back step and on one occasion fixed her toilet. Thomas laughs again.
“That week I fixed two toilets,” she says. “But Melvina is lucky. She can afford to hire people – not everyone can do that.”
Campbell Bryant asks Thomas if she can stay for a few minutes longer to help her open a bottle she’s struggling with.
Thomas doesn’t hesitate to say yes. “But I do have to prioritize,” Thomas says. “I don’t get out to some people as often as I’d like. Last week I was working with the same family for three days. It was a terrible situation. And there is another woman on my list who I only see once a month, and I know it’s not nearly enough. She’s always asking me ‘Why didn’t you call me more?’
“To people like that, I’m not seen as a professional,” Thomas says. “I’m their only family.”