Graphic From Bruce County presentation to a seniors fair of WHO's 8 domains
Bruce County’s Long Term Care and Senior Services is sharing the successes for their Age-Friendly Committee.
The purpose of the committee is to help garner an age-friendly community, which addresses the opportunities and challenges for an aging population.
The main focus is to help create a physical and social environment that promotes independent, active living, as well as enabling older adults to continue contributing to all aspects of community life.
Director of Long Term Care and Senior Services Megan Garland says that when forming their committee, they worked with students from Brock University’s Community Health Nursing program.
“Over the course of the three months that they participated with the committee, they were able to collaborate with us and conduct a comprehensive literature review for us, and also develop some suggested tools to support the completion of the Bruce County Needs Assessment in 2025,” says Garland.
The Age-Friendly Committee formed in June 2024 and is composed of representatives from the public sector, lower-tier municipalities, and various organizations that support or serve seniors.
CAO Christine MacDonald says that just because this initiative focuses on the older portion of the population, it doesn’t take away from supports for children or families.
“I would say we have a multi-pronged approach that takes place, so in the case of having an age-friendly strategy that is focused on the elder years, it’s an opportunity for us to dial in and be responsive to the particular and divergent needs of that group.”
She adds that the county is also working on DEI initiatives in the coming year. “On our 2025 work plan we’re going to be doing some more organizational work around diversity, equity, and inclusion overall. And so that will help us start to thing about what’s the overarching framework that aligns with a strategic plan in terms of how are we ensuring we’re being inclusive overall.”
The committee’s vision is to have Bruce County recognized as an Age-Friendly Community by the World Health Organization (WHO). To date, the committee has successfully completed its 2024 work plan, which included drafting terms of reference, defining guiding principles, and finalizing the community profile.
“I think if you look on that report, you see the the World Health Organization’s The Eight Domains work in there that really effect everybody’s life and so when you look at those, you can see that we’re working on, or the lower tiers are working on all of those things at one degree or another,” says Warden Luke Charbonneau. “I think we are doing a lot of work to make life better for everybody, but it’s good that we have this initiative focused specifically on seniors because our population is getting older and that’s just a reality and we need to focus on that.”