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When we talk to people across the Champlain region, we often hear about some of the challenges
that people have getting to and from health care services, and one of the ways to access
those services is to have transportation to get to where they need to go.
Back in 2007, the ministry moved community support services under the LHIN umbrella.
Transportation services was one of those services. The non-urgent transportation service is for
individuals who are certainly medically stable and can be comfortably and safely transported
through a non-urgent transportation system. The service is very much designed to serve
seniors as well as people with physical limitations.
I go every time on the grocery bus and they also drive me to my doctor's appointments.
It's a very friendly, good service, and it
helps you to be more independent. And that means a lot to me anyway. (Laughter).
The agency vehicles have a tourney seat that lowers to the ground for someone that has
mobility problems. So, they don't have to climb in. They can actually just sit in and the seat will
bring them up safely. They have all sorts of grab bars that the cars obviously wouldn't
have. They have easy steps, so the've been and added extra siding, so someone
can step in easier. So, non-urgent transportation service is available
throughout the entire region. We have 26 community service providers, across the region, that
provide this service, right from Deep River through Ottawa, to Hawkesbury.
The Good Companions Seniors' Centre has been around for 58 years, so soon to be 60
years. At the Centre we offer programs and services for physical activity and social
interaction, and then we have the community support services and community support services provide
services to seniors and people with physical disabilities to help them to remain at home
as long as possible.
Non-urgent transportation service here at
the Good Companions, it's part of the community support service that we offer. And what we
do is that we help clients that need to get to their priority appointments. So, those types
of appointments would be any type of medical appointment... so that could be doctor, dentists,
physio, anything that is related to your health.
Some of the clients that we take to medical appointments are very frail. They have main
conditions such as cancer or kidney disease and they are going for treatment that is really
essential for them to maintain their health. Sometimes they've had a hospital stay or
they've had surgery and they are coming to the hospital for a follow-up appointment.
So, it's really important to them that they get back to the hospital to see the doctor post -surgery.
The adult day programs are available throughout
Renfrew County and throughout the Champlain LHIN. The main focus for those programs is
to provide respite care for caregivers and also provide meaningful, stimulating activities
to our clients, and help them stay healthy, have proper nutrition and allow them
stay living at home as long as they safely can do so. The transportation is an essential
part of that, especially here in Renfrew County where we're very rural and a lot of people
have no other source of transportation available to them.
We also drive people to grocery shopping. It is essential that they can get out and
do the grocery shopping...so sometimes using other means of transportation for grocery
shopping can be challenging. So, it's really great to be able to get our clients out and give
them access to healthy options for their meals, and they can plan to go out shopping on a
regular basis. It also gives them the opportunity to socialize and connect with other people
who shop at the same time as them, and they look forward to shopping with their friends
in the store and just being able to share a cup of coffee while they're waiting to
go back in the... with the driver.
The vast majority of clients that we pick up - one of the very first
things they express when they get into the truck was how amazed
they were that the service existed and they wonder how long we've been doing this.
It gives them the opportunity to get out to medical appointments, to dialysis, or whatever
the need may be.
I remember the first time I met Jean. She
is a very fiercely independent woman. She has tried to do as much as she can on her
own for as long as she can, but over the past few years she's had a series of blows to
her health that has decreased her mobility. Suddenly taking the bus on her own is simply
not an option and she had been relying on taxis. Now, with the non-urgent transportation
program she has someone that walks right into her apartment door, greets her, walks her
to the car, gets her safely seated, has a friendly conversation with her on the way
to the doctor's appointment, which reduces her anxiety. She said to me, "Before, going
to the doctor's was a stressful thing, now I get to see one of my friends, one of the drivers
who talks to me," and calms her down. When they get there they help make sure she finds
where she needs to go. And if she's going to a new hospital or a new doctor, they make
sure she gets there safely.
Oh, I think it's a great help. It's a great support
to me, I depend upon it. It's nice to have it. I didn't know they had this before
I was ill. And they suggested it to me and it was something I jumped at right
away, you know. It was quite good. So it was nice to have it, yes definitely.
In many cases there are clients of the transportation system that need to make the same trip several
times over the course of a month and so the non-urgent transportation system provides an affordable option.
It's also avoiding the inconvenience of using
other transportation services. Our drivers pick the clients up from their homes,
drive them safely to their appointments and they know that they're going to be brought
home safely to their front doors. The drivers make a wonderful connection with our clients.
They do get to know them very well, which is really appreciated by the clients, because
sometimes they're having to face difficult situations in their appointments, so that
extra reassurance goes a long way.
Before the LHINs, there were multiple organizations
providing transportation, but they really had no way of coordinating their efforts, so we
sometimes would see vehicles that would be on the road that weren't full when they could
have been, if there had been a way for people to share drivers or share schedules.
So the LHIN really played a role of a catalyst to bring those different providers who were
offering transportation services to a same table.
I think the partnership between the Champlain LHIN and our organization has played a major
part in us being able to provide more non-urgent transportation and has benefited our agency
in a great way.
Without the agency vehicles provided by the
LHIN, we simply could not even meet half of what we're meeting now. Now, people get far
more drives more often. They can also call with shorter notice, because we have the ability
to check everyone else's schedule.
So the non-urgent transportation program has
had a tremendous impact at multiple levels. First, for the people who use the system;
we're also seeing it at the system level, because this is a much more coordinated and
integrated way of offering a service. So we're making better use of the resources that
we have. So sometimes for the same amount of investment, we're able to stretch those
dollars further; we're able to get more out of the services that are there.
I think that transportation is just going to increase as the older adult population grows,
as we know, which is happening in Canada, and I think the service is going to expand.
So this program is definitely needed.
We're continually making improvements to
the non-urgent transportation system, and we are really learning from patients' and
clients' experiences. We understand where the communities are that have the highest
needs and we'll make sure that when we provide growth, we're providing growth in those areas.