While some people are playing the blame game, the reality is there really is no one to blame about the Canadian Red Cross’ decision to close down the Health Equipment Loan Program (HELP) depot, located at the Sonora Community Centre for the past several years.
The HELP depot loans out medical equipment, including canes, walkers, crutches and bathing aids. All of the equipment and services will now operate out of a similar, but much larger depot located on Kootenay Street in Oliver starting this week.
Marie McKierman, HELP co-ordinator in the South Okanagan, said the decision was made to close the depot in Osoyoos after longtime volunteer co-ordinator and former Osoyoos Volunteer of the Year Charlotte Sanktjohanser informed her organization a couple of months ago that she could no longer operate it because of failing health.
After 27 years of dedicated service, Sanktjohanser deserves a giant round of applause from everyone in this community for a job well done.
For the past five years, she was ably assisted by Maureen Schofield, who, according to her mother Trudi, poured her heart and soul into helping her clients and assisting Sanktjohanser.
The decision to close the depot in Osoyoos was made solely because no other volunteers were able to be recruited to replace Sanktjohanser after repeated attempts to do so, said McKierman.
There’s no reason not to believe her and McKierman said she and staff members attended numerous volunteer fairs in and around the Okanagan Valley and Osoyoos over the past 36 months and made it very clear more volunteers were needed to run the HELP depot.
“We tried to get volunteers for over three years … it wasn’t for lack of trying,” said McKierman. “We certainly did try and asked numerous groups for more than three years and we didn’t have any success.”
If there is any good news in all of this it’s the fact that the service is still being offered, although travelling to Oliver is a difficult chore for many of the seniors who use the service.
Osoyoos Mayor Stu Wells said he’s very disappointed with the decision, noting the depot was used by hundreds of clients each and every year and he believes volunteers could have been recruited if the Red Cross put more effort into informing the community about the possible closure of the depot.
Wells said this matter will be discussed at length during the next meeting of council and he will try and do everything possible to make sure a HELP depot can be brought back to Osoyoos.
The decision to close the depot was made, in his opinion, only within the last few weeks and without any consultation with council or the community and that’s unfair because so many people have used this service for almost three decades, he said.
The bottom line is the Red Cross has made a decision to move this service to Oliver and it doesn’t appear management is ready to change its mind.
The best possible solution might be to have a local service organization drive seniors back and forth between Osoyoos and Oliver once or twice a week to visit the depot in Oliver.
If there’s a will, there’s probably a way to get this service back in Osoyoos, but as McKierman explained, the Oliver depot is quite large and is able to store much more equipment than what was made available at the depot in Osoyoos.
There also doesn’t appear to be any problem with recruiting volunteers to operate the service in Oliver, which hasn’t been the case in Osoyoos.
It should be interesting to see what happens because this was a valuable and well-used service that remains needed for hundreds of seniors who call Osoyoos home.