Seniors’ care society time travels

The Lloydminster Concerned Citizens for Seniors Care Society briefly dropped its advocacy gloves to celebrate its 10th anniversary.

The seniors’ group, headed by president Graham Brown, celebrated the milestone with cake a week ago, putting lobbying efforts for more long-term spaces on pause.

“It’s great to be celebrating 10 years as a society, but it was Rod Sellers and Dr. Raf Sayeed that started meeting back in 2005,” said Brown.

“There was another eight years of meeting every week and working on trying to get more long-term spaces until we decided we needed to form a society.”

Brown says getting more spaces is still the number one issue after all these years.

“The Jubilee Home is up for getting replaced (long-term horizon),” he said.

“We want to make sure we replace that and a lot of new additional beds. We need another 50-60 additional beds on top of that.”

Sellers and Sayeed were on hand to talk about what got them involved, with Sellers being the trailblazer in 2004 according to his recollection.

“When my parents were going into the extended care system, I realized how inadequate it was and where there were a lot of deficiencies,” said Sellers.

He later told the meeting, “all of a sudden they were talking about shipping my parents out of town. I started to speak up about it.”

That caught the attention of a younger Dr. Sayeed who saw similar concerns in the community and the two of them hooked up to get the ball rolling for more spaces.

“We decided to get together and try to get some people together and start trying to do something about the problems,” said Sellers.

Brown presented the two men with a list of the organization’s accomplishments saying, “here’s what you started.”

Ironically, the need for more spaces was highlighted by a copy of an Oct. 17 report on wait lists from Sharon Jackson, manager Primary Health Home Care.

The Lloydminster Continuing Care Centre had two people on the list, Dr. Cooke Extended Care Centre, four, Jubilee Home, two, Points West, 20 and Pioneer House, 15.

The Lloydminster Hospital had five people assessed and waiting for placement, Maidstone two waiting for place - ment and Turtleford one person.

Looking back, Brown thinks the senior group’s overall accomplishment is now being well known in the community by the Alberta and Saskatchewan governments as a mover and shaker.