Keeping Seniors Safe in Their Own Homes

The desire to remain in our own homes as we age has been significantly increased over the past few years. The COVID pandemic highlighted that our home is our haven. COVID also focused some negative thoughts about our current senior institutional living arrangements in Canada.

With the increased demand of the public for answers and solutions for remaining in their own homes we have been seeing an increase in the overall awareness by healthcare professionals, government, and financial institutions to make ready for the massive wave of need. A simple and acceptable means to help with these changes is to start making more robust plans and budgets that support Aging in Place.

Most communities have developed programs and infrastructure for seniors because they remain an integral part of your community’s heart and soul.  We believe that a part of those programs should include an assessment of the current living arrangements of elderly citizens in their homes by professionals and volunteers. This assessment serves as a baseline and risk indicator for your support mechanisms and your elderly citizens. Having the background knowledge of general safety concerns including the ever-present risk of falling will be a crucial learning for all involved.

A Senior Home Safety Specialist™ designation gives the users an underpinning of knowledge to help identify risk and help plan the next steps to safe Aging in Place.

The course is on-line, self-paced (5-6 hour), self-directed and hits the salient points to make practical decisions about safety within the home.

Volunteer groups, municipal staff, community policing, EMS services and senior groups have found that this training not just empowers the messages of safe living and falls prevention but also can be viewed as another risk mediator for staff and volunteers who are entering private homes on a regular basis and therefore by extension expanding their own workplace. This training can assist in protecting themselves as well.

We are happy to speak to any and all interested parties and look forward to having this curriculum be accepted as the navigational source for safety in the seniors’ home.

For more information, visit Age Safe Canada.