Community of Care, Ep. 5

Thriving on the Prairie

Resources:
Jane’s contact information, [e-mail]

More about the Community of Care model, https://communityofcarend.com/

Transcript:
Jodi Bruns: Welcome to Thriving on the Prairie. A podcast exploring issues concerning families and communities that inspire North Dakota movers, shakers and community difference makers to engage in lifelong learning. I'm Jodi Bruns, Leadership and Civic Engagement specialist, with NDSU Extension. I'm joined today with Jane Strommen, NDSU Extension gerontology specialist and I'm glad that Jane has decided to talk to me today about the Community of Care program. And what that's all about, how it is impacting communities across the state of North Dakota. So welcome, Jane, and thanks for joining me.

Jane Strommen: Thanks for having me, Jodi, looking forward to it.

Jodi: So I started working with.. with Jane and her team who works on community of care to facilitate some meetings, thinking about making this opportunity available to other communities. And so, I think it's important that we share exactly what is this program, Community of Care and what's happening with communities that are embracing this particular program.

Jane: Community of Care is a nonprofit organization that started in rural Cass County back in 2003. And it was really started by the Good Samaritan Society as a pilot project. At that time, the Good Samaritan Society was interested in how to help older adults and their family members that were living in the community because their core business was on skilled nursing facilities across the country. And so they wanted to do a pilot and they chose Arthur, kind of as the foundation area to do this project because that was where the company was founded. And so we had some seed money from the Good Samaritan Society and at that time also a grant from the Almstead Commission, to look at how do we start addressing the needs of older adults that live in a rural community. And so it really started as a pilot project and just engaging members and the community and talking about what's going on in rural Cass County. There's a lot of rural communities, small towns that comprise kind of the geographic area. And so, it began as a conversation, inviting people to be part of some meetings and tried to get representatives from all of the different geographic areas and communities, as well as making sure we had, you know, business and commerce, education, faith communities, healthcare, social services, government, whether it was the city or county. We had some legislators, and invited people together and when we learned about what was going on in our state. What were some of the challenges and then we started doing some discussion and needs assessment around what are the needs in this particular area, rural Cass County. And so that's that was kind of how it first started.

Jodi : So what were you hearing from people? I assume that there were older adults who were part of this planning process. And when they came to the meeting and said, “We think we want to be part of this in our community needs this” why... what.. what we're hearing at that time?

Jane: Well, when we did a kind of a needs assessment. We went through a fairly structured process to to identify the needs and there were alot. There were a lot of needs identified, but the ones that really rose to the top of the list was the need for a volunteer program that could do…. provide a lot of different services for older adults, but the biggest area was around transportation. Rural Cass County and you know, had some, some services in the county you know a dentist, part time clinic, those types of things, but for a big portion of folks living here they needed to travel to the Fargo/Moorhead area for services. And so that became a kind of the top need, as as well. There was a need also for just information. How do people find out about services and, you know. Because it's not something that you just know or or often you... you're really not interested until maybe a crisis occurs and all of a sudden, where do I get this? And you know, you don't even know what questions to ask. So, they talked about, you know, let's let's develop some kind of a resource center where there are staff that can help people that would be local where people could go. So those are some of the first things that we started with, is developing a volunteer program and developing a resource center staffed by a social worker, a care coordinator that could help people with whatever it was that they needed help with. Not being constrained by any kind of government funding that says you can only serve people of this age or you can only do, you know, your program areas, only this kind of narrow window. We were, we had great flexibility and how we were able to serve people

Jodi: So I think it's interesting. I read a statistic this morning that said between 2010 and 2025 the number of adults ages 65 and older in North Dakota is expected to grow by 52%. In 1980, older adults were 12% of the population, by 2025 they're expected to be 18% of the state's population. So older adults continue to be an economic driver in our rural communities. And I think this program is one way to make sure that our older adults can remain as active citizens in our communities all over the state.

Jane: Absolutely. You know, our older adults, you know, we have a higher percentage of older adults living in rural counties than we do our metro areas. And we know that older adults really contribute to to their community in in great ways. In addition to just the economy and financially, but they are also great volunteers. And I'll just give you an example, community of care has a volunteer program and the majority of their volunteers are older adults. They're retired and they're stepping up to fill a need in the community. And it's really a win-win situation. And, you know, they're a key element of success for Community of Care because they're supporting it in so many ways. And to be able to help our older adults feel like their community is a good place for them to retire and continue to live as they age is, I think, really important work.

Jodi: I read also today that some North Dakota older adults far exceed the national average in volunteering in communities. Statewide 41% of older adults volunteered in 2017 compared to the national average of 29 and a half percent. That, I mean, that's amazing that people continue to see value in helping neighbors and helping each other and just the value of prolonging people staying in their community and in how important that is. I think that's that really says a lot about the integrity of our communities and the people who live there.

Jane: I think it speaks to like who we are in North Dakota and beyond. Where we help each other. We... we want to help our neighbors, our friends. And older adults, just because they get to a certain age don't stop doing that, they're continuing to serve on the church on the school board and and volunteering for, you know, there are many times, keeping the community going because of their community service. So it's, it's, you know, they are a real asset in our state and we have a growing number. And in addition, you know it's it's really important as a person ages to to feel like they have a purpose. You know, everyone needs to have a reason to get up in the morning and to be able to have things that are you're passionate about that you can contribute to. I think it's just a win-win for, for everyone.

Jodi: So the expansion of this program I think is pretty important. So it's obviously been very succ...