When invited to attend VCH’s community engagement forums for seniors, Sheila Baxter was a bit skeptical initially.

“I thought it was a crock at first,” says the 82-year-old with a laugh. “But then I saw that they were well-organized and we truly were listened to, I changed my mind.

In Vancouver and on the North Shore, six forums were held in each, with close to 200 seniors, their families and community-based agencies attending.

“The goal was to hear from seniors with complex health concerns, their families and caregivers, and community-based agencies about what their care needs are,” says Yasmin Jetha, director of Home and Community Care and Older Adult MH&A at VCH. “We wanted to know what their needs are and how to better meet them.”

Common themes

Issues that came up in these forums include:

• The struggles around getting good, consistent home support with different workers and have their needs met.
• Confusion around the coordination and collaboration between health-care teams. (“People were saying we need to get on the same and work collaboratively, especially with family doctors. That came up quite a bit.”)
• Concern about wait lists for services.
• Lack of support for care givers.

Shannon Hopkins, director of Home & Community Care and Transition Services at VCH says the forums were really about engagement with the community.

“Attendees were very much involved with the forums,” she says. “Patients, clients and their families were definitely forthcoming about what mattered to them when it comes better health care in the community.  It was a learning  experience for all of us.  Sheila agrees.

“VCH showed us a lot of respect – a lot of respect was shown for the issues we brought up,” says Sheila who is an anti-poverty activist, counsellor and published author. “Teamwork happened at these forums and I felt like was part of a team where change was going to happen.”

Homecare a concern

Her biggest concern is around increasing quality care for seniors in the home and reducing wait lists for those services.

“There are people who need homecare now,” says the 82-year-old. “It’s important. The do need to stay at home. The do need a doctor and a medical team to visit them.”

Laura Case, chief operating officer for Vancouver Community  says that community engagement is a key part of understanding patient needs as we work on developing a new model of care for seniors, part of a Ministry of Health initiative to improve primary and community care for complex and frail seniors.

“VCH is quite progressive in the area of community engagement,” she says. “We’re the only health authority with a formalized community engagement department. So we’re able to step up and provide that kind of support for engagement right away, we have that infrastructure in place to do that work.”

“In other words, we rock,” she adds with a laugh.