COLD LAKE - Age Friendly Cold Lake is dedicated to offering comprehensive support through a wide range of programs, meeting the needs of seniors in Cold Lake and the surrounding areas.
Cathy Aust, Program Developer at Age Friendly Cold Lake, recently spoke about the importance of the group’s mission, saying, “Age Friendly Cold Lake is a senior-serving agency. We provide services to support people in their homes, to support people in the community. The majority of our clients are underserved seniors, so those who typically fall through the cracks - isolated, low income - not all of them, but the majority of them.”
The agency offers a variety of programs tailored to meet the diverse needs of seniors. Their in-home support services are funded through a grant, and they also offer a frozen food program, with meals distributed to the community.
She further explained, “We do in-home support that we've received through a grant from Healthy Aging Alberta. So those supports are a light housekeeping. And we do a meal support program with our frozen food program.”
Age Friendly works in collaboration with the Stepping Stones Crisis Center.
“Their journeyman chef, cooks the meal and provides those to us, and we provide them to the community,” explains Aust.
The organization also offers local and long-distance transportation for non-emergency medical appointments.
For local transportation, seniors can go grocery shopping, attend medical appointments, pay bills, or visit the bank. The long-distance transportation is specifically for medical appointments booked outside the city.
According to Aust, “Right now, since today, we have provided [transportation to] 85 long-distance non-medical emergency places.”
In addition to practical support, Age Friendly Cold Lake hosts a monthly Feast to Friendship luncheon for isolated seniors. These luncheons provide an opportunity for socialization and community building.
The number of attendees varies month to month, “but they're averaging around 50 people who come to that lunch every month.”
Other key programs include caregiver and grief support groups, a Men’s Shed for communal projects, and a volunteer navigator program through NAVCARE, which assists those with palliative concerns.
The organization also has a seniors’ resource library with materials on dementia and palliative care, and they offer dementia resource kits and light exercise programs for seniors with early to moderate dementia.
Age Friendly Cold Lake runs several other initiatives such as a public awareness campaign, an end-of-life doula service, short-term caregiver respite, a tri-shop program with e-bikes, and a medical equipment loan service.
“I think it's really important to know that the aging population, that our senior population, is going to just explode in the next 10-20 years. And I don't even think it's that long. We need to provide services for them going into the future, because at one point, we're going to have more seniors than we have youth,” says Aust.
For Seniors Week, Age Friendly Cold Lake will host their annual barbecue on June 4 from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m.
“I think this is the third or fourth year we've been doing it. It's usually well attended... But it's always been well attended. Last year we had to go out and buy more stuff on the run,” says Aust.
