Eva Navrot is concerned for seniors in Williams Lake.
“There’s really nowhere else for them to go,” said Navrot, the seniors advocate, based out of the Seniors Activity Centre.
The seniors advocate in Williams Lake currently works under the umbrella of the Cariboo Chilcotin Partners for Literacy and helps seniors in a broad range of ways, assisting with online forms, accessing benefits, elder abuse issues, housing issues and much more.
For the first year, the position was funded by the Union of B.C. Municipalities to pay her for 20 hours a week to fulfill this role and help coordinate other volunteers, like those who come to help with technology.
Over the one year, the office saw 519 people.
After this initial funding ran out, they were able to receive some Red Cross funds to carry the program and role on until Dec. 31 of 2023.
Now, Navrot said her last day in the role will be on Dec. 19 and at this point there is no more money to continue to provide the level of help for seniors they have been.
The role had existed previously to some extent as a two hours a week volunteer role, but she said the need they have been seeing and the challenges many seniors are facing as costs rise and housing is so hard to find, have had them taking on much more complicated and involved cases.
If the role goes back to just a few hours of volunteer time a week, Navrot will still try to do what she can to help to coordinate the other volunteers, but the capacity will not be there to help the more challenging or involved cases.
“It will put a huge strain on the front office here (at the seniors activity centre), and there’s nowhere to send people,” said Navrot.
Peggy Christianson and Navrot were the ones who started the office of the seniors advocate back up again after COVID, and they are concerned the precedence they have set in terms of expectations and the services being available will now all be lost if the position goes back to relying on volunteers.
So far, the group has applied to the city of Williams Lake for a fee-for-service agreement to fund 10 hours a week through the city, and they are looking for other funding sources, including reaching out to the United Way. However, some of those funding sources wouldn’t be available until well into 2024, losing some of the momentum they have now.
“You’re starting all over again trying to build up a program that’s already existing and working really well. This is sort of the problem with project-to-project funding.”
If the city does come through to fund the service, they would be able to maintain 10 hours a week, helping to coordinate the volunteers.
Peggy Christianson said volunteers need training and oversight, noting the need for confidentiality when working with vulnerable seniors.
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