INNISFAIL – The first-ever national Dementia-Friendly Communities Awards have been handed out and while Innisfail did not come on top, the work by the local Community Partners in Action (CPIA) team stood tall with the very best.
“We were all blown away by the calibre of nominations we received from across the country and we were so impressed by all the work people are doing,” said Heather Cowie, national project manager for the Dementia-Friendly Canada Project, who co-hosted the awards with Mario Gregorio, a nationally recognized dementia advocate.
“Thank you to all of our nominees for their efforts. You're all an inspiration.”
January is Alzheimer's Awareness Month in Canada. The award ceremonies were livestreamed on Jan. 15.
Innisfail was selected alongside three other nominees from across Canada in the small to medium category for organizations that have 250 or fewer staff members.
The Hamilton Council on Aging was selected as winner for its Faces of Dementia initiative; a campaign to build awareness and reduce stigma.
Innisfail’s CPIA team, which previously was one of two winners of the 2021 RhPAP Rhapsody Health-care Heroes Award, was selected as a national finalist from about 20 total applicants based on its 15-month Dementia-Friendly Initiative that began in early 2020 and carried over into 2021.
The team included Ellen Helgason, community recreation therapist with Alberta Health Services; Jennifer Wood, former dementia-friendly community coordinator with the Wolf Creek Primary Care Network; Wendy Evans, a geriatric assessment nurse with the Wolf Creek Primary Care Network; and Mayor Jean Barclay.
“Even being named in the top four is a huge accomplishment. The people that were so involved with delivering the education to the community and all the work they did should be very, very proud of themselves,” said Barclay.
“And we, as a whole community, should be grateful for everything that was done. They brought the conversation about dementia and living with dementia a long way in our community.”
Evans said while Innisfail’s first-ever dementia-friendly project may have officially ended in 2021, the initiative is still ongoing in the community.
“We will continue to provide those resources depending on what people living with dementia and their care partners feel they need,” said Evans, adding it is important the community continues to build on awareness.
“It's like when I’m thinking of today and I was seeing some people and they weren't aware of some of the things that we provide in the community,” she said. "That's the challenge; getting that information out there because I do think people really want to participate but don't always know it's there.”
Helgason noted the CPIA project was not created just for Innisfailians, but also as an initiative that has expanded out to a much larger population in the rural areas of the neighbouring county and even throughout Alberta and beyond.
She said the key to the initiative’s future is sustainability, and whatever was brought to Innisfail has to work in the future or until citizens no longer wanted it or called for something different.
“Being able to adapt to change to what the needs are, what we are seeing in Innisfail and what people are telling us what they want to see is really important to be able to adapt to that,” said Helgason.
“We will continue to maintain the programs that we have running, as well as creating new ones in the future.”
