It Takes a Village to Age Optimally

Ontario, once again, seems to be miles ahead of BC with helpful programs for older adults. McMaster University has produced an Optimal Aging Portal with a motto of "Healthy Aging Information That You Can Trust". Check this site out:

https://www.mcmasteroptimalaging.org/

If you subscribe this this site, you will receive emails occasionally which will contain reliable information on living successfully. 

A recent topic, 'Intergenerational Programs: It takes a village to age optimally', discusses the importance of interacting with young people. Often, particularly for people without grandchildren, we associate only with adults.  

If you are a senior living alone, there are not many opportunities to interact with young people in Ambleside. However, our Senior Activity Centre has a free program called, Intergenerational Screen Time for Seniors, that can help solve this problem.  Not only do you get to interact with local students, you can also eliminate many irritating  issues you may have with your cell phone or tablet. 

On Thursday May 18th and June 8th from 4:30 to 5:30, there is a free drop-in for seniors to ask questions about their electronic devices from the expert young people who volunteer their time. 

Why Create an Aging-In-Place Group In Your Building

I look at my present life and try to visualize what my life will look like as I become less mentally and physically agile in the next few years. It brings up the question of what I can do now to make my future more palatable. Like many other older adults, I want to continue living in my present apartment for as long as possible. In order to do that I will need help from time to time. 

The recent pandemic gave us all some time to think about what can go wrong without warning and how our life can change on a dime. Everyday activities became more difficult; we were socially isolated; and had to make adjustments and compromises that were often not pleasant. From small things like not being able to open a jar or a can to large things like not seeing family and friends on holidays, it was very unsettling. 

Seniors who are living alone or with an aging partner in apartments can benefit by helping each other and sharing resources and ideas to make everyone's life easier. The concept of seniors empowering seniors is being promoted by the University Health Network Openlab (https://norcambassadors.ca/ideas/) in Ontario. They have many suggestions of how these apartment buildings can form a group to meet their particular needs.

Below are some things that can be organized by an Age-in-Place Group 

• Skills swap
• Wellness support
• Telephone tree
• Sharing workers/tradesmen
• Exercise buddies
• Rides to Appointments
• Shared Grocery Shopping
• Birthday Celebrations 
• Community Caterer
• Safety Door Hangers
• Pot Lucks
• Social Groups

These groups, once they are set up, can then network with other groups in the vicinity. 

 

 

NORCs Everywhere

When I started blogging a while back, my aim was to find people in my neighbourhood who were seniors like myself who live alone in an apartment building.  My interest was two-fold:  to make all of our lives more interesting and fulfilling by creating a network of ‘seniors helping seniors’ and to provide local information about our little village, the kind that might have been available in the past from a local radio station - weather, tides, upcoming events, etc.

I live in a building and a village both of which can be described as a Naturally Occurring Retirement Community or, NORC, for short. Statisticians in Ontario coined this term when they discovered pockets of older adults living within a short radius of each other who were actually aging very successfully in place. Like my neighbours in Ambleside, when people find a place with good amenities and services, they very rarely leave. My next door neighbour who is in his nineties has lived in his suite for over fifty years. 

Then, the University Health Network in Ontario promoted the formation of NORC Committees which is a group of people within a building dedicated to improve the lives of seniors. They have been successful in establishing a network of these groups in Ontario. Unfortunately, I have not been able to find something similar happening in British Columbia. 

My building is a Naturally Occurring Retirement Community as are several others within a few blocks from where I live. My thought was that I could encourage a few people to form a NORC committee within their building, and of couse our building, based on guidelines presented by UHN (University Health Network). 

https://norcambassadors.ca/about/

At the same time, however, I am just discovering the many secrets of successful of blogging in 2023. Due to the high volume of bloggers like me, search engine companies like GOOGLE are overwhelmed with us and have had to set criteria on what becomes searchable. I have also found that I need to engage with social media - facebook, instagram, pinterest, etc., - and to learn about search engine optimization. It may be as much as ninety days before I can expect this blog to become searchable online. The only way to see my blog at present is by knowing my blog address (URL).

While I am waiting for people on the internet either here in Ambleside or from anywhere to find me on a search of keywords like ‘Aging in Place’, ‘Aging in Ambleside’ or ‘NORC’, I have a couple of months to get involved with other social networks and to learn more about blogging in general. In the meantime, I intend to keep blogging and hoping that my small circle of friends and family will help me promote this blog one person at a time. 

As I write this, it occurs to me that this network does not need to be just in my small community, it can be anywhere the internet takes it. NORC committees could be set up and associated with others in all parts of Canada where there are pockets of retirees. Although it would be nice to have a few close enough that we could meet for coffee from time to time.

Kinless

 

 It is kind of exciting to discover a new word. One new word can explode into many new directions of thought. Yesterday that happened to me when I came across “kinless”. 

Many of us will at some point fall into the category of ‘kinless’ or ‘almost kinless’. What follows below is what I have stolen from an Ottawa Citizen article and, of course, adapted for my purposes. 

Growing numbers of Canadians are “kinless,” an older adult with neither a spouse nor living children. Others are not technically kinless, but have kids who live far away.

Sometimes called “solo agers” — and less charitably, “elder orphans” — it is one by-product of shrinking families, and a pressing policy concern especially to local health authorities when they become involved. 

Canada is among the nations with the highest prevalence of kinlessness in the world, alongside Ireland, Switzerland and the Netherlands.

Geriatrician Dr. Samir Sinha, director of health policy research at the National Institute on Ageing, has growing numbers of patients who are kinless. This is particularly common in some segments of the population, such as people who are LGBTQ+, who are less likely to have a partner and may be estranged from their families. There are also people who are not technically kinless, but are still isolated.

“Family structures are changing,” said Sinha, the director of geriatrics at Mount Sinai Hospital and University Health Network in Toronto. “I have increasing numbers of patients who have never married or had children. Or if they did marry, they outlived their spouse.”

In 2007, about 7.2 per cent of people 45 and older in Canada did not have a partner or a child, said Rachel Margolis, a demographer at Western University. By 2011, that had increased to approximately 10 per cent.

At the same time, loneliness is a growing population health threat. Since the majority of care for older adults comes from family, kinlessness is a “potentially critical demographic” trend for society, the institutions that provide services for older adults, as well as for those who find themselves kinless, they warned.

People have to think about the possibility that they may become kinless over time — and what they will do about it, said Sinha.

“We have to help people build social networks that are meaningful to them, places where people can gather to build new networks,” he said.

“I have patients who say: ‘I have a will.’ I tell them: ‘I don’t care what happens after you cross the rainbow bridge. I want to know what you are planning for the last hundred yards.’ “

Friends, acquaintances and neighbours can serve as “elastic ties” for older adults without family. Research shows that there is some “substitution” happening in social relations among those who are kinless, said Margolis.

But that alone may not fully make up for a lack of family ties. Substituting friends or community involvement for family works well into middle age, but declines as people age, ties with work colleagues unravel, same-age friends die and health problems make involvement more difficult.

Childless and unpartnered older adults are the most likely to report being lonely. Middle-aged and older people without children or a partner are less likely to be involved in the community, particularly men. Being widowed increases the risk of dying, possibly because of a lack of companionship and healthy habits such as shared meals, said Margolis.

“Your social health is just as important as your physical health.”

The social dynamics of kinless people also work differently from those with partners and children. Kinless adults communicate with relatives less frequently than those with either a partner or children or both, and instead interact with friends more often. This is especially true of university-educated kinless people. It suggests to researchers that kinless people are not “substituting” in siblings, cousins and other relatives for the decreased social relations that can come without having children.

“It takes more effort for kinless people to set up and maintain a social life,” said Margolis.

Samir Sinha: handout photo jpg

 Most people want to age in place. But lacking a spouse and having no kin — or no kin living nearby — is one of the factors leading to being placed in long-term care. 

People have to think about the possibility that they may become kinless over time — and what they will do about it, said Sinha.

“We have to help people build social networks that are meaningful to them, places where people can gather to build new networks,” he said.

Becoming involved with a NORC committee might just be a solution.

First Official Meeting of Aging Gracefully

On Tuesday April 4th, we had our first official meeting of the Aging Gracefully group at the Senior Center. There were 17 people in attendance. 

Paula Cline opened the meeting with a delightful overview of what we hope to accomplish and introduced our speaker, Dr. Deborah O'Conner, 

Deborah O’Conner, who is a Professor at the School of Social Work at UBC, presented our group with her modified version of Palmore’s Facts on Aging Quiz. This sparked a lively discussion around how the normal aging process affects our daily lives. Once we have a basic understanding of what normally happens to our bodies and minds as we age, we can more readily determine when we need additional help or services before a crisis emerges. 

Three main themes of the afternoon were:

• Advocacy - we need to advocate for ourselves and/or have someone advocate on our behalf
• Ageism - we need to be aware of myths perpetrated by ageism which may stop older adults from seeking help
• Social Isolation - we all need to be more aware of a drift towards social isolation and its dangers.

In future sessions, Aging Gracefully hopes to delve deeper into many of these ideas. In May, we will hear from Sgt. Mark McLean, WVPD, and Jeff Palmer, Block Watch Coordinator, on how to recognize and thwart scams. In June we will hear from experts on Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD).

Where Are We Going?

First of all we had our parents and family, then possibly our teachers and later maybe mentors to guide us. Now, we have retired and all of those influences/influencers are gone; often, we have suddenly lost partners and good friends. Covid emphasized just how isolated we can become. 

Many of us will spend around thirty years in retirement. While we may have squirreled away a little money and dreamt of travel and golf and escape from winter to ready ourselves for this freedom-55 ideal, many of us find the reality quite different.

While we may be traveling a bit and playing golf occasionally, the reality is that we are often  spending more and more time with basic health and happiness concerns. Doctors and lab visits along with physiotherapy/chiropractors, massage therapists and exercise programs fill our calendars. We often do this just to maintain our current health. At the same time, our social networks are diminishing as people move on or pass away. 

It can sometimes be difficult to know the best solutions to our changing lives. Media and governments have their own agendas when they address our issues. Often they are founded in reaction to problems. Only when seniors have been scammed out of their life savings or long term care beds become too scarce, does the media and government take note. We need a plan to understand and deal with these issues before they become emergencies. 

Few of us have studied gerontology. We have some vague ideas that our senses will diminish over time and that we will eventually become frail. We become wrinkled and gray-haired or bald. Our short term memory becomes worse over time. Of course we are constantly hearing on the news and through advertisements of how we can avoid all of this or at least diminish the negative effects of aging.  However, it is difficult to know what is real from what is hype. 

To counteract this, a program is being offered at our Senior Centre called ‘Aging Gracefully”. Once a month, qualified people will speak to this group on the best ways to age happily and healthily. Hopefully, we can gain some insight on how to live our best lives.

Aging In Place

No one I know wants to move into long term care - not into assisted living or a nursing home. Governments do not want us moving into these facilities whether or not they are subsidized. For individuals it often means that your life and your control over it is diminishing drastically. For governments it means increases in costs and the problems of managing regulations that are never adequate for even the present issues. The answer to both sides of this conundrum is often simply to age in place. 

However… the opportunity to age in place successfully seems to to out of reach for many individuals and couples simply because of a lack of coordination of services along with a misalignment of funding. Often a crisis occurs and decisions need to be made quickly. Individuals have no time to look at a variety of long term solutions. They need immediate help with mobility, medications or diet or a combination of the three. The solution is often to move them to the first available bed in a nearby facility.  

An Ontario group is trying to change this. Their solution appears to be both cost effective and simple.  

A group of medical statisticians while reviewing Canada census information observed that there were many clusters of people over the age of sixty-five in many parts of the province. Often these groups were found in apartment buildings in urban centers. They coined the term NORC to describe these Naturally Occurring Retirement Communities.  As the medical people began to formulate plans to take advantage of the economies of scale these groups might produce, another concept began to emerge. This idea has the potential to transform the opportunities for seniors to keep control of their own destinies and ultimately allow them to stay in their present homes. 

Any building or area where at least seventy percent of the residents are over the age of sixty-five can be identified as a NORC. These groups might be in individual condo buildings or rental buildings or town houses or even clusters of homes in close proximity. Ambleside not only has many buildings that could quality as a NORC but the village itself is one large NORC. 

If a few individuals within one of these clusters were to create a group, or a committee, to formulate plans, they could interact with the seniors within their cluster and with health agencies, stratas, local governments and other businesses to make aging-in-place much more manageable over time. Plans could be put in place to help people who may need help in the future to live comfortably in their present home. Day to day inconveniences could be minimized; information and resources could be shared. Social isolation, especially during times of ill health, could be reduced. A group like this could join with similar groups in our area to let government know how best to support people who want to stay out of long term care. 

Here is a website which will show you how this could work: 

https://norcambassadors.ca/about/

Choose Happiness

Monday, March 13, 2023 Choose Happiness! A friend said a few days ago that she chooses happiness. While her life may not be perfect and she may have many negatives that she could dwell upon, each day she chooses to be happy instead. How does she do this, you may ask? Well, once you know what you enjoy, how you like to spend your time and what keeps you in a good mood, then you set yourself in that direction. Make plans to do enjoyable activities in the near future. She said that most of all, she likes being able to look forward to doing these activities. Then, when her mind wonders to unpleasant thoughts, she stops for a moment and acknowledges what she is doing and then distracts herself by focusing on fun future activities that she has purposely planned for herself.