Age Friendly Cold Lake (AFCL) has rebranded itself as it builds connections across the Lakeland region. The organization’s new name is simply “Age Friendly,” or AF.
AFCL had developed working relationships with other seniors-serving organizations in Alberta and across Canada, and has been steadily growing and adding services to meet the needs of Cold Lake’s older adults.
Now as AF, they are using the teamwork approach to help deliver services to neighbouring communities.
“Age Friendly started working with a group called Connecting People and Communities for Living Well about three years ago. And oh my gosh, just so many good things have come out of that,” said AF’s executive director Cathy Aust.
“We are working as a team instead of working in silos. We’ve brought some of the key players for health and well-being for seniors,” Aust said. “We have a nurse practitioner, we’ve got social workers from Assisted Living Alberta. And new to us is the acute care manager.”
AFCL had set its Cold Lake priorities by going through a workbook from the Connecting People and Communities for Living Well organization. A Bonnyville group is undergoing the same process.
Aust says discussions with Shelly Franklin from Covenant Health in Bonnyville started the process of increased cooperation between the communities.
“She had never heard of Age Friendly Cold Lake,” Aust said. “So when I told her what services we offered, and how we offered them, and the grants and the subsidies and everything else, she was really excited that there was an interest in providing that service to Bonnyville.
“She identified to me that they have numerous seniors that they know aren’t attending their medical appointments because they can’t afford to get to out of town medical appointments.”
AFCL applied for and received a grant from Healthy Aging Alberta (HAA) to operate a transportation program for Cold Lake the M.D. of Bonnyville.
The HAA grant is vital to creating and launching the transportation service, but Aust says AF is developing stable funding through municipalities and sponsorships to make it sustainable over the long term.
“What’s always sad with grant funding is that you get the funding to create the program, to execute the program, to have success in the program, and then the funding goes away,” Aust said.
“And when the funding goes away, the program shuts down. And so does any help, any staff that was hired under that program grant.
“We didn’t ask for a lot from the municipalities, but we did ask for it for three years, and that’s enough to keep the programs running in each of the communities. And we’re hoping that through sponsorship, we can not only improve and expand services, but we can also retain staff to execute the services,” she said.
As fundraising and volunteer recruiting continue, the cooperation on service provision is growing.
In addition to implementing a transportation program, Age Friendly has introduced its Hope Harbour caregiver respite program to Bonnyville, and helped establish a caregivers’ support group.
AF’s frozen meals program, which has been an important source of inexpensive easy-to-prepare meals in Cold Lake, is preparing to launch in Bonnyville.
Following a presentation to Elk Point Seniors Advisory Council, Aust says there is mutual interest in developing services together in that community as well. Which particular services would depend on what Elk Point identifies as its own priorities.
“It will depend on funding and it will depend on services that are actually needed in that community, because I think that each community will have some uniqueness to it,” she said.
“They may not all need the same thing. You know, our caregiver respite program is running well, but maybe Elk Point won’t need a caregiver respite program. Until we start working there, we don’t know.
“We know the big one for Elk Point is transportation.”
The need for community-based services for older adults is shown by how much AFCL has grown since its inception in 2020, expanding its offerings while seeing that there’s always more to be done.
Aust says it’s time for AF to share their success—and also their success stories.
“They say, ‘tell your story.’ I think we’ve proven our story time and time and time again,” she said. “We’ve been looked at from across Canada by people who have reached out to us.
“How did you do this? How did you do that? Can you share this document with me? Can you share your bio? Can I call you again? We get constant requests for information.
“We have really established ourselves solidly in Alberta, and pretty equally across Canada,” Aust said.