The Creston Valley Community Services’ Therapeutic Activation Program for Seniors (TAPS) is hoping to raise more awareness around elder abuse by issuing a calendar each month that highlights a specific type of abuse and lists resources to help prevent it.
The calendar themes of the “Community Connections for Stronger Seniors” project will revolve around financial abuse and fraud, emotional and physical abuse, and more.
“It’s not uncommon, that’s why elder abuse organizations and awareness of it is all over the place,” said Maureen Cameron, Creston’s TAPS community liaison. “Sometimes it’s emotional, sometimes its pure ageism where there’s education needed. We just want to highlight it.”
Cameron added that the goal isn’t to directly address the issue of elder abuse head-on, but rather to highlight forms of abuse and connect residents with resources on how to identify and prevent abuse.
“We can’t put a lot of information, but we’re going to be involving the fire department, drug and alcohol, COVID-19 information, issues around seniors’ abuse, like phone scams and all of that,” she said.
While calendar themes will focus on elder abuse, other topics such as isolation, health and fall prevention will also be touched upon.
“One month is a theme for the calendar, but because of that theme, we can look at what to expand on,” said Cameron. “There are other topics under that title. There may be two or three directions to go. Those could become columns in the Advance.”
She added that local organizations such as Swan Valley, Crestview Manor and the Kootenai Community Centre Society are also contributing information to the resource calendars, which will be issued until March 2021.
The initial idea for the project — which was to be launched in April — has changed significantly due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“The things we have promised, we can’t do. We were going to do 20 workshops and presentations in the community, go to Blossom Festival to pass out resource information and all that stuff,” said Cameron. “We’ve come down to the monthly resource calendar. We can’t do workshops or presentations, so why don’t we use the Advance and do columns to expand on the topics.”
From now until November, she said that TAPS will be busy with information gathering and editing content to meet the calendar format.
“I’m hoping by the end of October, we’ll have all this ready to go,” she said.
Do you have something to add to this story, or something else we should report on? Email: aaron.hemens@crestonvalleyadvance.ca
@aaron_hemens
aaron.hemens@crestonvalleyadvance.ca
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