Saskatchewan seniors say their voices aren’t being heard
“Can you hear us now?”
The play on that tag line from a cell service ad could well be the question the Saskatchewan Seniors Mechanism (SSM) hopes is answered when government is presented with a report recommending the implementation of a seniors strategy.
More than 20 years ago, the Saskatchewan Seniors Mechanism brought together a range of seniors’ organizations to better serve the province’s older adults, and a recent survey it commissioned suggests governments should do the same, and pull together seniors-related programs and services into one easy-to-find area. The SSM is in the process of pulling together the findings from the survey, which examined the issues facing older adults and the ways those issues might be addressed through the development of a seniors strategy. The findings will be put into a report, including recommendations, to be considered by the government, SSM stakeholders, the general public and by provincial candidates during the 2020 election. The analysis is expected to be complete in June, with the final report made public this autumn.
Brian Harris, who heads up the SSM research and issues committee, says the consultations found that, while there are programs for older adults, there isn’t any co-ordination or overarching strategy. “There isn’t any overall view of our aging population and how we should be planning for that, because it has some implications for society. We had a sense our voice wasn’t being heard,” he says.
That opinion is echoed by SSM president Randy Dove. “Our sense is we’re not being heard and it’s time that we should be,” says Dove.
Saskatchewan’s population is aging. The 2016 Census showed there were almost 154,000 seniors aged 65 and older, more than 15 per cent of the population; adding in the over-55 population brings that figure to about 27 per cent or roughly a quarter of the population. That percentage is only expected to rise as the population continues to age.
“What we want to see is that we look forward, and that government programs and services are, in fact, aligned with the needs of our population as we age,” Harris says. And, those implications go beyond health care, the most often cited issue for seniors. While that continues to be a concern, the feedback found that seniors are also worried about their mobility in the absence of a transportation service and their ability to access, and afford, services to help them stay in their homes. Dove says the interests of older adults in Saskatchewan are wide ranging. “They go from transportation to financial needs to housing to participation in their communities to making sure they can make a meaningful contribution to the province, to society,” he says.
A frequent message seems to be that, older adults, even computer-savvy ones, have trouble finding the information they need. “Another thing we’re hearing is that people don’t know who to talk to – they’re having trouble finding the services that they need,” Harris says. Dove adds that older adults are often unsure whether services are even available. “We think that there needs to be some mechanism in place that, if there are services, people need some vehicle where they can at least locate them,” he says.
A central clearing house with information on all the services available could be part of a seniors strategy based on the focus groups, setting out the direction government should take in the coming years. “We hope the development of this strategy will drive conversations to put the older adult back on the map,” Dove says. While other jurisdictions have a co-ordinated seniors strategy, some with full ministries devoted to the concerns of older adults, Saskatchewan does not. The Saskatchewan Population Health and Research Unit (SPHERU), a collaboration between Saskatchewan’s two universities, released a report in June 2018: Healthy Aging in Place: An Overview of Healthy Aging Strategies in Rural and Urban Canada, an interjurisdictional comparison of older adult programs across the country. The full report is available online at www.spheru.ca.
While the SSM expects to make the concerns of older adults, and a seniors strategy itself, topics of discussion during both the federal election this fall and the provincial election in 2020, the organization isn’t out to place blame. “We really want to approach government more from an effort to participate with them, rather than just criticize, because this is not the making of this government, this is the making of several governments over a long period,” Dove says.
With the final results of the survey expected next month and a report with recommendations in the fall, Saskatchewan seniors can hope their government will, in fact, hear them now.