Our services tend to be preventative. Our relationship tends to be long term. People start with us with health and fitness. We do fall prevention, exercise and wellness, and wellness check-in calls. As time goes on, people may not be able to exercise. We offer them things like congregate dining, group trips to the mall, and other kinds of recreational activities that perhaps they would not be able to do without support.
Then we get to the stage where people actually need adult day programming. Cognitive and physical impairment occurs. The families have real challenges looking after their loved ones and need respite. We pick the clients up, we escort them to day programs, we keep them for the day for exercise, food, music and all kinds of activities, and then we carefully bring them home.
Then the need might move forward to respite care in my home. I can't dress myself. I can't shower. I don't know when I need to take my medication. We send PSWs in. Just to that point, for every person we serve, we have an intake and assessment. We follow how they're progressing. As things develop or change, we in fact recommend changes in our services.
One of the most important things we do, and I don't believe this is available in very many places, is to offer short-term, overnight respite care in our caring centre. This means that if you've been looking after your loved one for three years and you've had no break, you can book them into our caring centre. They get 24-7 PSW support, help with the activities of daily living and all their meals, and they just get to chat. It's actually more for the caregiver than it is for the client, but it's a safe place for them to come.
Other things include transportation and, as I mentioned in my presentation, food security, which has become an increasingly important challenge for us. We do “friendly visiting”. A lot of that's done by our volunteers, who are linked with one senior. They call them once or twice a week just to say, “How are you doing? What do you need?”
During the pandemic, we continued to do all our virtual programs. If you went to our exercise program once a week, our staff called you once a week to see how you were doing. If you came to an adult day program three times a week, we called you three times a week.
What we really do is we stay connected. We stay there to support people, to follow how they're doing and make sure the supports they need are provided to them, if not by us then by those who can do it. We know the landscape.