EDMONTON – To offer successful support services in rural areas, says a Victorian Order of Nurses manager, co-ordinators should first ask people what services they want.
“You don’t know what’s best until you ask the community what are their needs,” said Brenda Allen, manager of volunteer services and program development with the Victorian Order of Nurses in Kings County, N.S., during a session at last month’s International Association of Volunteer Effort world conference.
“You can’t offer cookie cutter services. What works in downtown Toronto isn’t the same as what’s needed in northern B.C,” she said, describing how her group managed to develop successful volunteer services in rural areas of Nova Scotia.
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During a pilot project that has been used as a model for developing volunteer services in other parts of the province, Allen said the key was sitting down with seniors and asking them what they needed.
But just finding the seniors is a job in itself. Governments won’t give out their lists of seniors.
In one small community, Allen sat down with ladies in a sewing circle and asked them to check off all the seniors and their phone numbers in their community.
In another community, she met with several church secretaries and asked them to identify seniors in the area.
Once they found the seniors, a group of volunteers conducted face-to-face interviews to ask them about their needs.
Common concerns
While all the communities involved had different needs, seniors in each had three problems in common – transportation,
social isolation and a need for someone to do yard or heavy work.
Once the needs were identified, volunteers came forward readily because they believed in the cause, Allen said.
In Kentville, N.S., transportation was identified as the biggest issue, but the group felt the problem was more than it could handle immediately. Instead it chose to put together a luncheon program, which addresses the social isolation problems and acts as a forum to bring information to the seniors.
In the tiny fishing village of Harborville, residents reported they didn’t need any resources, but wanted a hall that could be used for meetings.
In a year, they raised $30,000 for indoor plumbing and to make the existing building wheelchair accessible.
In Kingston, the community tackled transportation problems. Through the Nissan Canada Foundation, the local Nissan dealer supplied the group with a van for $1 a year. The van is used to deliver seniors to day-care programs, deliver meals and pick up seniors for events.
In Wolfville, residents developed a booklet to inform others of the services already available. The local economic development group has picked up the cost of publishing the booklet. Ten years later, many of the initial projects continue. There are 300 volunteers in 14 programs looking after 800 aging residents.
During that time they found there were significant differences in finding and keeping rural volunteers. Several reasons were identified:
- Volunteers must be compensated for their expenses because of distances involved.
- Rural programs need more volunteers than urban programs.
- Volunteer recruitment is more difficult because of fewer people.
- Volunteers must have their own vehicles because of transportation difficulties.
- Retired folk often retire south or to the cottage, leaving a big volunteer hole.
- Delivering services in rural areas has little appeal. Volunteers worry about bad roads or vehicles breaking down.
