"For years, I would run into people who told me they had taken the course in some community," McConnell said.
Those people were then given the tools they needed to lead their own helping skills workshops, so they could train even more people. McConnell calls it "building helping skills," and she said she trained people from about 10 different rural Newfoundland communities.
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They were taught to listen, to ask pertinent questions and how to interpret complicated emotions. The idea was to train people in rural communities - church group leaders, Rotary Club members - in basic therapeutic practices. "And I think we both had a belief that we could teach people how to be more helpful to each other." "People in the communities were suffering, and services to communities were sparse, if existent at all," McConnell said in a recent interview. That was exactly the idea behind a project Susan McConnell helped launch after the moratorium, through the local Canadian Mental Health Association chapter and with its then director, Moyra Buchan. Sinha, who has advised several Atlantic Canadian provinces on senior care, says that rather than forcing seniors to move into long-term care facilities in larger towns, Newfoundland and Labrador should look at programs that empower communities to allow people to age safely and happily at home.
Samir Sinha, director of geriatrics at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto, says a program by the Canadian Mental Health Association that trained community members to help their neighbours cope with the cod moratorium could be used again to help the province care for its rapidly aging rural population. Johns, many of them still live in tiny former fishing towns scattered along remote coastlines - and a long drive from the nearest doctor.ĭr. Young people began moving away for jobs in other provinces, leaving behind devastated parents and grandparents.Īfter three decades of out-migration, Newfoundland and Labrador is home to Canada's oldest and most rapidly aging population: nearly one in four residents is 65 or older, according to the latest census data.
Fish plants closed, small businesses shuttered and fishers laid off their crews and lost their livelihoods. On July 2, 1992, as fish stocks collapsed, the federal government suspended all commercial cod fishing in the province, ending a major source of income in rural Newfoundland. "If you look at countries around the world - even the United States, or in Japan, or Australia, New Zealand, in the United Kingdom - you can see a lot of initiatives that look like this kind of approach." "I think similar models can be leveraged to really help combat social isolation and loneliness," Sinha said in a recent interview. Samir Sinha, director of geriatrics at Toronto's Mount Sinai Hospital. That model of enabling people in the community to care for one another could be harnessed to help the province care for its rapidly aging rural population, says Dr. When it comes to caring for seniors in Newfoundland's outport communities, there may be a homegrown model the provincial government can use - and it sprang from the cod moratorium imposed 30 years ago.Ī program by the Canadian Mental Health Association trained community members - no matter their expertise - to help their neighbours cope with the depression, listlessness and anxiety that followed the moratorium, which wiped out jobs for more than 30,000 people. When it comes to caring for seniors in Newfoundland's outport communities, the provincial government could look to a homegrown model that sprang from the cod moratorium imposed 30 years ago.
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