AS:019 Creating an Age-Friendly Community

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Lucy Marco was the president of the Grand River Council on aging and in Lucy's bio. Lucy has 57 years of experience in manufacturing, marketing, Human Resources, Administration, and Management position combined with 50 years of volunteer service, in over 40 community boards, advisory committees and service clubs. A recipient of many awards, Lucy is most proud of her federal citation for citizenship YMCA Peace speaker medal, Rotary Sunrise, Paul Harris Fellow Award, Chamber of Commerce Outstanding Business Achievement Award and the naming of a Wilfrid Laurier University Student Residence as Lucy Marco Place. And if you are in Brantford, Lucy is a local legend in our community for her work. And I myself, I've worked with Lucy on countless sports and organizations. So that being said, Lucy, I'm going to turn it over to you for your presentation.

I'm going to speak to you actually today I really have. I want to thank Linda very much for thinking about inviting me to do this because I'm resident, I'm speaking for the residents, of the voices of the City of Brantford, the County of Brant and six nations of the Grand River. But for the people that are here that are not from this area, and may not be from Canada, the Age Friendly Movement is a global initiative initiated by the World Health Organization. So I'm going to take you through creating a community for a lifetime and tell you that the Council on Aging here is sharing the voices of elders or older adults in order to help the municipalities and anybody else in your organization or in the community, create a community for a lifetime, for all ages from 5 to 105. So the Grand River Council on Aging is not about all people for all people. It's about the aging process. We're going to start off with talking about who we are and we're going to talk about what we do and we're going to talk about the people in our community. So the Grand River Council on Aging is a registered charitable nonprofit organization and it is whole role in life is to educate and encourage the development of an age friendly community culture. Now, the World Health Organization defines that as being a community that optimizes opportunities for health, participation, and security doesn't matter anybody, we all have the opportunity in the material municipalities we live in to optimize our own lives through health participation and security. Having said that, the World Health Organization, recognizes that municipalities are the ones that have the biggest impact on our lives on a daily basis. It encourages the municipalities to develop policies, services, settings and structures to support and enable the residents to age actively now in this community, we're very proud that both the City of Brantford and the County of Brant are officially recognized by the age-friendly by the World Health Organization as age friendly communities and that the Six Nations of the Grand River has completed its elders journey and doing Age-Friendly Community Assessment and doing plans for their own residence. What's important to know is that in Ontario, there is an Ontario Association of councils on aging that also represents the voices of the residents and their communities. And their municipalities, of course, are all different. There are also Age Friendly networks that are meetings of east-west, south Ontario municipalities that share all these things that the World Health Organization recommends. So the 2021-Canadian census has just been released. And it was really great to see the same thing when it was confirmed from the 2016 census. There are more there's now 19% of the population is over 65. That's more than those that are 14 and under. Now, our interest is the fact that projection for 2030 that is shown there shows that it was projected by 2038 years from now, 55 years and older would represent 35% of our total population. We're waiting to see how that holds up because that's been same since 2006 census. So we're looking to see what the 2021 census shows us what is really important and to all of us here today is to understand the impact of mobility, on all of us as we live, it's not age, that is the biggest impact on our life. Of course, it does every day we age, but mobility is what impacts the daily aspect of our lives. And so we at the Council on Aging, we refer to the residents of our community has been go-go, slow-go and no-go. That's pretty straightforward. If I use transportation as an example, go-go, they can go anywhere they want, they can go up and down, they can ride, they can walk, they can ride, run, they can take part in sports, I can buy groceries, but if they're a slow-go, something slowing them down. Now that could be simply a mom with children that slowing her down. Or it could be somebody that's had an X or it could be a chronic disability, and that chronic disability could be physical, it could be hearing, it could be eyesight, it could be medical, it's something that slowing them down. And people have to think about how they're going to get where they're going to go and what's going to happen when you get to the other end. And then no-go, well, the daily aspects of living are exactly the same thing for them. But how can transportation be an issue? If they're stuck, and they're not going anywhere? It's an issue because for them, and they're socially isolated, perhaps and they're worrying about how are they going to get the services they need? How are their friends and family going to get to visit with them. So if we think about that, and what they councils on aging do is that we listen, we're listening to people with lived experience and get used to seeing that web that acronym PWLE. It's an acronym that Council on Aging has actually been used since 2008. When we started in this community, it is the residents of Grand River council on aging that we are listening to of this community that the Council on Aging assisting to and then we're sharing whatever experience that they have that with people or organizations that have the resources to respond. That's going to become a little mark here in a minute, but it is the practice of the Age Friendly Community global initiative to consult with the residents of the community no matter where they are in this world and our community. Another example in this area is the transition to Ontario health news which is going on right across the province. And those health teams are now accessing and calling over input from people with lived experience as the whole Ontario healthcare system supply of services is being redeveloped. So let's look at the words elder versus senior who are these people with lived experience, we like to say that we promote the voices of elders and that term was preferred by participants that have taken part in focus groups that we've conducted in this community from 2008 through to 2015. And the people that took part in those focus groups, they preferred the word elder why because it is a global idol of respect, it recognizes wisdom gained through life experience. Now in the we published a Community Impact Report in 2017, around the same time, as people started to use older adults, as well as elders. So we today we use elders and older adults in place of each other. But it's important to know that in our particular community, we have a very large number of indigenous people, they recognize elders as being where there be experiences to pass on to the younger ones that is also worldwide. The World Health Organization refers to seniors and older adults and elders, depending on what they're talking about. What's important to know is that you can be an elder at 45, because there's a couple of generations to pass information on to experience on to here have to wait to be 65 or 95. And if you look at the word senior, it's always got a qualifier, senior kindergarten, senior school you can go be 55 will go Shoppers Drug and get discount, but really what it is 65 is the age when governments refer to people as seniors, because that's the pensionable years. So when we think about all that, and the people with lived experience, what can be done about the life that we're living in in the community, we like to say that we have to use an age friendly community. If we look at this graphic here, and we're looking at from childhood through to older adult and age, then you see that the mobility can change for all kinds of different reasons as it goes through there. And what that doesn't show is that somebody might be wearing a hearing aid and you can't see whether somebody has an eyesight pain, but you do know that there are times that you're going to have to perhaps use a walker or a cane like me with a severe balance problem, or it may be a wheelchair, it may be short term, because if it's an accident, it may be long term because it's chronic. So what we say about an age family filter is that anybody standing or looking at making a change, whether that be a person in their home, their family, it'd be a business, it'd be an organization B, the municipality questions should be asked about that change, will it be saved? What about visibility? Will it be comfortable how we're going to communicate to the people being impacted by the change? How are we going to reach them is customer service an aspect so the most important thing is to know to ask questions quite often checklists are developed by using this filter and the most important part of all of this is to respect the individual throughout the entire process. So let's look at that lived experience. Well, when it comes to generational, we have all kinds of life experience, every one of us, we hear from our life experience and the generation that we lived in. And that's where we kind of form our opinions, like opinions with other people. And we happen to have habits that we might have known, we might have shared, it is one way or groups of people. But then if you look at the language we use by those people, Oh, my goodness, what my grandchildren don't learn now adults and their parents, so I have great grandchildren, they all talk the language of technology today, I'm forever saying What are you talking about? And of course, they have no concept about what I've lived. And so they'll say, What are you talking about, and that's the life that we live in today. And it's constantly changing around us. And then you add mobility, which we've just talked about to those three, three things. And then you look at the education of all the different ages, from five to 105. My goodness, when I left school and learned math, I had to memorize the timetable. They don't teach that anymore. Everybody has computer they don't even teach cursive writing anymore thing. If you look at social versus day versus social of yesterday, I'm from yesterday, we used to our social was to dance play cards sit down with a family for dinner once a week for sure. Whereas today, the social choice quite often the first choice is something that is technology, social media oriented. So what about planning, whether it be for customers, whether it be more next, oops, looking at customer service, as an example, if we look at customer service, whether it's going to be for customers, clients, patients, or employees, we've all been that all at the same time. Sometimes we all that right now, and who's looking at how what's been planned for us and what our mobility issues might be. And then if you add to it, the demographics made up of five to 105. But you can have a family with two or three different generations in it. And you can have different people with family with different mobility issues, short term, long term. So then you look at okay, here we are, we got all these people, we got to plan for them. We've got we've got services, we've got buildings, we've got roads, we've got sidewalks, what choices, do we have to even talk these people? How are we going to reach them? How can we plan to get to them? That's when we look at what should we use the radio? Should we use social media? What about TV? Could we be using print in some way? Okay, we're gonna use print, what's the size of the product? What language should we use? How basic should it be? How's it going to be presented? What are the colors so when you talk about mobility, it's more than a physical disability, it can be a physical disability with others combined, and it can be something that isn't even visible, it might be a medical disability. So what's hap, what is happening with these people with live experience, we tell them that they can be part of change. If we look back, and we look today, how to plan for the future. Traditionally, our communities happened as a result of societal changes, you know, over 100 years ago, our buildings and our streets and our communities were built for life as it was then whoever thought we'd live as long as we do now in the 60s and 70s use revolutionized how life is used work today, or live today. So that's where we are going to is the people that have lived to get to where we are today, because we need to plan for tomorrow. The use of today will be the older adults of tomorrow, who can't even imagine what they're going to need to know. So they use the older adults today have experienced the comings and goings of different mobility changes. They've lived in different ways. They've communicated in different ways, but they've learned to cope with whatever life threw at them. And that's where shared experience comes in. So how are we planning in this community? Well, I had in 2007, a group of volunteers realize that those statistics I shared with you earlier that 35% of the population would be 55. And at that time in 23 years, that's 15 years ago, nothing much has changed. And yet a lot has changed. And so I'm going to try and bring some of that out. But no one knew what that might mean for the community we lived in. So a steering committee was struck to go out and ask the elders are older people and their families. What did planners in the community need to know about planning for the future as people aged? The result was 99 recommendations? Who's that? Oh, my God 99 recommendations. Isn't that wonderful? Well, we evaluated how far the community had come, we publicly published The 2008 master aging plan. So it was everything was evaluated in 2013. With the idea gee, we better go back and ask everybody all over again. What progress have we made and a two year process resulted in the 2017 Community Impact Report? Can you imagine 628 suggestions came to us for that community impact report 135 of them related to housing. So what did we learn? We learned two very important pieces of information and this applies to absolutely every one of us every day of our lives. People don't know what they need to know until they have a need to know then they have absolutely don't know where to go to get it. The other thing that all of these people told us it is important to listen to and understand the voices of live to experience so I'm going to share with you how the Grand river currents on aging we reacted to that need to know and I will share with you at the end how the municipalities reacted to that need to know because in our communities, we had the municipalities go through this whole process with us, we have on our website, what we call the info hub, and it has a 350 plus links that are to local resources. And they're all sorted by the eight domains of an age friendly community, such as civic participation and employment, communication and information, community support and health services, housing, outdoor spaces, and building respect and social inclusion, social participation, and transportation. Wow, every one of those people with mobility issues have to live within the confines of the community. So go-go slow-go, no-go. There's references for us. For all of them, there was links now COVID had a major impact on the 55 Plus members of the community, because many of those people were the volunteers of all things community related, and so many of them became Slow-Go. And even no-go because they were isolated. They couldn't go anywhere. It changed their lives. It changed how they approach things to change, whether they were housing was going to be where they were living, whether it would stay their activities, to services and shopping, that all change and the words I liked about our reentry into a COVID deuced world is not that we're ever going to go back to what was normal, we're going to move forward to a new normal, and it is going to be changed for everyone no matter what whether the call goes slow-go or no-go. So they info hub for information, it provides the contact for events, activities, helpline support service safety, just to name a few. The other thing that the older adults told us and particularly this apply to those with mobility issues, there are two things First of all, they want to know where could they save some money. So we develop a seniors discount directory, and then they want to know within those places where they could save some money, where's it accessible, so we talk to businesses to talk to business to make sure if they're gonna offer seniors discounts and they want people to come, then they need to make sure that they're accessible wants to get there. And the other is, while a lot of seniors aren't tech savvy, others have no access to technology, nor do they want to. Therefore, it's important that we be able to offer something that their family members or friends can print and give to them. And this is what this directory can be done. The other thing is the what happened with the COVID is we had a lot of people staying home. And we this was one opportunity to actually socially integrate those people with mobility issues. But those that did not have mobility issues, we start offering virtual workshops free, they're offered every other Wednesday morning for two for one hour. And it's been wonderful to see the people with a disability joint struggle and no go mixed up together and all kinds of subjects and activities that are of interest to the older population. In fact, if somebody missed a workshop can even see what they've been missing on our website. The other thing that we did was realize that, oh, people needed to be connected. So we developed a community at home newsletter that goes out every two days after every workshop. And it's interesting there because it provides all kinds of information on what's going on on the community. And for Go Go and struggle both they can both access it, it also is printable. Now I said at the beginning that we are a charitable organization, I'm not here to solicit a donation. But I want to let you know that it is a charity. And we do depend on our volunteers and our fundraising efforts to proceed with anything that we're doing, always looking for volunteers. And so in our community, we're always saying if you know someone, do you know someone would you like to get involved. And if you do, please go on our website and fill out a volunteer information form because what we do whether they have a disability or not, is we help them understand where their skills can be used, because you don't have to be able to lift and heavy stains or do anything if you're going to register people at a desk. You can there's all kinds of different things where the mobility issues can be also put people with those can also be part of the volunteer they can get involved in fundraising even as an activity and decide to share this one with you last year. First of all, we used to have Taco fest it was called a large community event in the Harmony Square in downtown Brantford COVID. When we searched and tried to figure out what are we going to do to raise some funds for our operating expenses. So we had a virtual walk the Grand Parade and mothers and fathers sisters and brothers known as Grammies. People were walking to support their loved ones. And they made up where they were going to walk. They could walk around their building, they could walk wherever they want to walk. It was a ritual walk did it to support the work of the Council on Aging and celebrating their loved ones. Well, in 2022, we're going to do it again, but we're going to do it in person. And so this is a place where those that want to still do it virtually they can for those that want to meet and greet they can so we're going to do it this year behind a local high school on a show out. So that brings me to what I'm about to tell all of you, I'm attempting to create an understanding we all are of what an age friendly community can be, and how it is to be inclusive of all mobility issues. And so today, I've tried to give you a different perspective. And I know that I have, and I'm going to tell you that I'm appointing you all as Age Friendly champions, I want you to go out and I want you to spread the word and I'll tell you, the best way to spread the word is when you see somebody and you see something that doesn't sit right, bring up the Go, go slow, go no go. If you see a step that's in the wrong place. If you see a ramp that's got the wrong height, I have a problem with ramp, swim slopes, and bring up the Go Go slow go discussion, and you'll find it works. It works and miracles at home, at work and in the community to access products and services. So you are all Age Friendly champions. And now I want to show you an example of how the municipality back in 2008, the City of Brantford got involved with a master aging plan that adopted it that they would commit to it. And they did and they started to implement as budgets allowed a stoplight three placements that showed the time there was available to cross the road as well. Those lights have a beep beep for people that are behind. So that is an age friendly initiative. It will go on as long as stoplights are going on. And I'm sure there'd be many, many changes. Here's another one. Also back in 2008. We identified that we had interlocking bricks downtown. Now in Ontario, a lot of these cities have interlocking bricks, they're a nightmare for anybody that has a balance problem and or is walking with a cane or walking with a walker. So we pointed out the voices that that was a danger really a danger accidents waiting to happen while the city made the commitment that they would replace those bricks with concrete as they as the budget and construction brought the opportunity up. And most recently, they did that around the Branford Library downtown all the way to the seniors Beckett seniors building and around to a parking garage just to show you what voices can do in a community. So they did make a difference. So with the example about the sidewalks we have a result of the tremors summit process. It resulted in the 2017 Community Impact Report with a 628 Suggestions following its publication City of Brantford in the County of Brant both were recognized as the World Health Organization as age friendly communities. They both have developed Age Friendly, healthy aging strategies. Their strategies cover all assets, roads, sidewalks, buildings, lights, water we live in. And of course the municipalities are the ones that manage Supportive Housing Income support. So there are many, many things that came out of their involvement and listening to the people that resulted in their aging for Age Friendly plants. So if you wanted more information about the World Health Organization, and in our case, they Branford grant location, approach to world to a trendy communities. Our website is www.ge R CoA. And that's where you'll find the info hub, the seniors discount directory, those things I talked about. It's also where you see the Community Impact Report and all the things that residents said that need to be thought about the plan for the future. And those 628 Suggestions are broken down into eight different reports. And the housing one has has 135 suggestions. And so when it comes to housing, that's one that we're recommending that the summit, Sarah was talking about vided all this information to them that people be aware of what the residents say needs to be looked at for the future because the residents are also doing exactly what Kate said plan for the future. We have to live with what we've got, but it has to change. And that's not so think I'm over to you and leave it to you to take over.

I can't thank Lucy enough for her presentation. She is a passionate advocate.

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