By Don Urquhart, Times Chronicle
Seniors in the South Okanagan from Okanagan Falls down to Osoyoos now have expanded transportation options thanks to donations from the RDOS, Oliver and Osoyoos. Desert Sun Counselling & Resource Centre took delivery of its new bus in early August.
Marieze Tarr, Executive Director at Desert Sun said the organization had been setting money aside to replace their older, smaller van and in a conversation with Rick Knodel, Electoral Area “C” Director and Mark Pendergraft Electoral Area “A” Director the initiative picked up steam. In the end RDOS Areas A, C and D along with the the two towns contributed to the purchase.
The RDOS also helped with the RFP which turned out to be two RFPs because the original budget of $125,000 was not enough for the purchase as all the bids came in higher. “Our board decided to make a little bit more funds available so that we could purchase a bigger bus,” Tarr says.
The $150,000 vehicle can seat 14 persons along with two wheelchairs and already has an extensive plan for its usage going forward. Desert Sun also decided to hang on to the older smaller van simply because the need for transport is so great amongst seniors in the South Okanagan.
The new bus will be used primarily for Desert Sun’s programming, in particular the highly successful TAPS program that it runs in Okanagan Falls, Oliver and Osoyoos. Funded by the United Way Healthy Aging program, the Therapeutic Activation Program for Seniors (TAPS), is a wellness program that fulfills a vital role in addressing the problem of social isolation amongst seniors.
The program connects isolated and lonely seniors who face challenges accessing programs and services on their own. The program enables seniors to access activities, nutritious meals and social support, and to get connected to other community services.
In only a few short years the program has expanded from 10 participants to over 70.
Desert Sun runs the program two days a week from the Osoyoos Activity Centre (aka the senior’s centre), two days a week at the Oliver Senior Centre and one day a week at the Okanagan Falls Seniors Centre. The program runs during the spring, fall and winter months.
“And so we’ll use the bus to transport seniors between the communities, and then also to pick seniors up from their homes and transport them to the activity,” Tarr said.
Tarr went on to say that plans are afoot for the fall where the centre is hoping to provide a service using the smaller van to take seniors to medical appointments.
“The hope is that we are going to work very closely with our two community support workers who work in the physicians offices in both Oliver and Osoyoos and see if we can get them to sort of coordinate medical appointments out of town,” she says.
This would be something like one day a week to Kelowna and one day a week to Penticton. Community support workers do currently provide that service, but only in extreme circumstances, she notes. “We find that there’s a real need for seniors to be transported to their appointments and they are not being able to get themselves to some of these appointments.”
She notes there is a bus service but the lack of frequency and the need to transfer in Penticton is problematic.
“We want to provide more like a HandyDART service where they actually get picked up from home and then bring them back at the end of the day.” She also notes that if there are more people that need to go to appointments they can always substitute the bigger bus, “so this gives us a little bit more options”.
