Thank you so much.
I think many times you realize that there are so many initiatives in the communities, but they're not well managed and they're sitting in silos.
In my statement, I talked about the need to also include senior women in identifying what their needs would be. I think we need to start with having some conversations with senior women, health care professionals and social workers to do some preliminary environmental scan of the issues and why people are not using the services that are currently available. When you go to the recreation centres there are some library services there. The opportunities are there, but sometimes people in the communities are not aware of them. Is there a need for us to make people in the community aware of the services that they have? Are there language barriers? Some seniors don't speak English. There is information in the facility but there's no way to translate it, or there's nobody there to interpret for them. Is there a need for us to train the staff in those facilities to be sensitive to the needs of the seniors or to be culturally or religiously sensitive to the needs of different cultures and religions?
Maybe that would be the first step: to examine what we have, to evaluate what we have, and to develop ways to enhance it. If there's a need to start new programs, maybe we can do it in consultation with seniors. We can ask them what would benefit them.