January 24, 2022
While taking preventative actions to safeguard our healthcare system may have been a new concept for the general public, brought to light by COVID-19, it has long been a driving force for Community Support Sector (CSS) organizations.
Such is the case for
Community Care Concepts of Woolwich, Wellesley and Wilmot, the only CSS provider across three townships and rural Waterloo Region. “We are the go-to organization for supporting seniors, or what we would call ‘adults with unique needs’ to live in their homes,” Executive Director Cathy Harrington explains.
These supports include home care services like light housekeeping or home maintenance assistance, nutrition programs like Meals on Wheels, transportation services to help seniors and adults with disabilities attend their medical appointments, and respite and adult day programs, which afford family caregivers essential rest and support.
Cathy explains that, without services like the ones they offer, vulnerable individuals would struggle, putting physical and financial pressure on other parts of the healthcare system. “They would be contacting their physician, if they had one, they'd be showing up in Emerge. Their needs would be escalating to a certain point that they would become much more in a state of crisis.”
But individuals in need don’t always approach organizations like Community Care Concepts of Woolwich, Wellesley and Wilmot for help. Sometimes, they don’t know help is available, or worry that it will come at a cost. “Many people fear that someone will assess them, and decide that they can't stay in their own home,” Cathy says. The reality is, CSS organizations will not remove folks from their homes– in fact, their aim is to do the exact opposite. Helping people age at home – and keeping them out of hospitals and long-term care – is exactly what the community care sector excels at.
With a catchment area spanning a large, rural geography, and an aging population, where “two of the three townships that we serve have a higher percentage of older adults than in the rest of the region,” connecting their services with the people who need them the most can be challenging for Community Care Concepts of Woolwich, Wellesley and Wilmot.
To help, they’ve developed a network of community partnerships to connect with potential clients as efficiently as possible—a system that prepared them well for the past couple of years. “The pandemic really shone a spotlight on our need to work together,” Cathy says, “For us, it's trying to figure out…what other services [folks are] already engaged with, and how we can work with those other providers to complement the work that they're doing.”
While reaching and helping people who need it is always a win for Community Care Concepts, the risk that a growing number of people may become reliant on their services comes with a new set of challenges. “I think that the challenge for us is, what happens after the end of [the Ontario Community Support] program? Because we have attracted far more individuals than we would have been serving before, [who] all have very real needs. And those needs will not go away when the funding [ends],” Cathy says. “How do we sustain that?”
Although Ontario’s strong Home and Community Support Sector is vital for a sustainable health system, precarious funding puts the future of programs like these in serious jeopardy – and puts the entire health system at risk. “We were so thankful to have the Ontario Community Support Program, because it gave us additional flexibility, to be able to truly respond to those needs that were out there,” Cathy says. “But…the needs continue to climb. And long after the program is over, we'll have to continue to figure out as an organization how we respond to those needs.”
While the future may be uncertain, Community Care Concepts of Woolwich, Wellesley and Wilmot, like so many CSS organizations, is leaning on its strengths to find the way forward: resilience, productive partnerships, and a strong sense of what vulnerable people need locally, on the ground.
