Healthy Aging Tools
Tools
This practical volunteer training and support guide was created to help ethno-cultural seniors’ groups develop and conduct formal culturally appropriate volunteer training and support. The training guide will enhance the volunteer work currently done by the different communities and will meet the need for more formalized training and support that has a cultural component. The guide is intended to help increase the capacity and sustainability of existing ethno-cultural groups in Ottawa who provide volunteer services. It is also meant to act as a resource to mentor young people from different cultural backgrounds who want to volunteer in their own community, to help them learn and practice their language skills, and to increase knowledge of their own cultures of origin.
Funding provided by the Government of Canada, New Horizon for Seniors Program.
The Guide is also available in:
This Resource Guide was developed as part of the “Collectively We Care – Collectively We Help” Forum held on October 16, 2019. The Forum was hosted to educate ethno-cultural seniors in Ottawa about what constitutes elder abuse. More importantly, it was geared to service providers to enhance their understanding of the needs of ethno-cultural seniors in order to develop services and resources to meet the growing needs of this population. As a community we appreciated the importance of service providers and seniors coming together to address the often hidden issue related to elder abuse and to develop ethno-cultural sensitive solutions.
The Resource guide provides information to both deliver talks and to facilitate discussions in the community as a tool for raising awareness about ageism and elder abuse. It includes notes on facilitating open discussion with groups based on culturally appropriate narratives and videos. The Resource Guide has been designed to support bilingual community volunteers to deliver community education.
This tool is developed as part of the Developmental Evaluation of our Culturally Responsive Community-Based Healthy Brain program (dementia day program). Our goal is to help community stakeholders in developing their model of a Healthy Brain program.
This community-based participatory research study used a social determinants of health framework to understand whether and how social isolation is an issue for unpaid caregivers from ethnocultural communities who care for seniors.
This study focuses on unpaid caregivers from six ethnocultural communities in Ottawa who may experience social isolation while caring for a senior.
South Asian residents with dementia and their family caregivers face unique challenges throughout the journey of care - from early diagnosis to end-of-life care. Lack of knowledge and stigma against mental health issues, a fear of discrimination by the community and health care providers, beliefs against seeking professional help, and an unavailability of culturally inclusive services are all barriers South Asian Canadians face when accessing dementia care services (Holmes, 2018)
In response to these challenges, the Social Planning Council of Ottawa, Champlain Community Support Network and the Indo-Canadian Community Center Seniors Program hosted a forum to explore the development and implementation of an adult day program for people with dementia of South Asian descent.
This forum was designed to create dialogue between ethno-cultural seniors and service providers, as a step towards the development and implementatoin of a culturally-appropriate service delivery model that prevents abuse and neglect and promotes the wellbeing of ethno-cultural seniors.
The forum was successful in opening up conversation about an issue that is very silenced within ethno-cultural communities. The document presents an overview of the forum and prospective next steps.
The report provides an overview of the purpose of the Forum, a summary of the information presented, and insights gained through roundtable discussions with Forum participants. This document demonstrates the growing interest in addressing the needs of ethno-cultural minority seniors in Ottawa and reflects the interests and concerns of seniors, service providers, and other community members shared through the Forum. This report also outlines opportunities for future action and suggestions for next steps to follow up on topics addressed through the Forum.
“Keeping Ottawa Seniors Connected” was a three year multi-agency collaboration to reduce seniors isolation. The Social Planning Council of Ottawa’s component of the project was delivered in collaboration with 26 grassroots ethno-cultural seniors groups. This report summarizes the evaluation of the three year SPCO project.
Funding for the project was provided by the Government of Canada, New Horizon for Seniors Program (Collective Impact).
The Micro-Funding Initiative for Seniors project was funded by Employment and Social Development Canada from May 2013 to March 2014 to test a new delivery model to provide a cost-effective and critical “on the ground” culturally sensitive services to seniors and other vulnerable populations within ethno-cultural communities in Ottawa. The model used an established not-for-profit (Social Planning Council of Ottawa) as a central granting agency through which to channel funds to small ethno-cultural organiations with less organizational capacity. The project was to help address the needs and challenges facing ethno-cultural organizations serving seniors in ways that were cost-effective and consequential, including the provision of micro-funding to better serve their seniors. This report evaluates the project.
This report examines best practices for supporting the integration of immigrant families. It focuses particularly on the role of small ethno-cultural groups. The report is part of a Social Planning Council of Ottawa project entitled “Families in Community”. The project was funded by the Social Development Partnerships Program of Employment and Social Development Canada.
The Dementia-friendly arts guide is a guide for arts venue managers and staff on how to make the environment, facilities and programming of arts venues accessible to people with dementia, their families and careers.
This guide will provide an introduction to Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias and will also help you recognize when someone may be living with dementia. The guide will also provide strategies and helpful tips for communicating with people who are living with dementia, and will make recommendations for programs and services that are mindful of people in the community who are living with dementia. It will conclude with ways that you can adapt your recreation or community centre to be more dementia friendly from a planning and policies perspective
A downloadable two page tip sheet.
A downloadable tip sheet for communicating with someone with dementia.