The West Shore Local Hero Awards are back! You can find this year’s special feature in the March 22 edition of the Goldstream Gazette or online under e-editions. Stay tuned for more on each of this year’s honourees, you will be able to read their stories online at goldstreamgazette.com.
For more than 20 years, a little-known group of volunteers nestled in the West Shore RCMP’s Langford building has spent their mornings calling local seniors who often have nobody else.
The Keep in Touch program is run by the detachment’s community policing section and currently serves 27 clients as old as 100 in the West Shore and Sooke. Each client gets a call from a volunteer each morning from Monday to Friday, according to community policing clerk Heather Allan.
“We phone them every day usually between 8:30 and 11 in the morning,” said Allan. “We have a binder that gives us information on each client, and we just check in with them, ask them how they are doing, and make any notes so the next volunteer to call them knows what’s going on. If there are any concerns, like we can’t get a hold of them and they have not left us a message, then we can either reach out to their emergency contacts, or send an officer over to their home to check on their welfare.”
Since the program was launched in 2002, Allan said it has spread to other communities served by the RCMP which have recognized the need for it. For many of the clients, family and friends are no longer around, leaving their conversations with program volunteers one of their few opportunities for socialization.
“It’s just unbelievable what it means for the clients. We get candies and cookies and calendars sent to us, they are just so thankful,” said volunteer Karen Crowther. “Sometimes we just talk about the weather, some of them tell us about their children, it’s just regular conversation really.”
Crowther said that over the 19 years she has been a volunteer with the program – signing up after seeing an ad for volunteers in the Goldstream Gazette just after she retired and started searching for something to keep her busy – she has really gotten to know the clients as they come and go through the program.
While the benefits for the clients are obvious, Crowther stresses the program is also benefiting its volunteers, saying she personally gets “so much joy out of it,” each week she is on shift.
She encourages anyone who can spare a few hours out of their weekday mornings to apply – as long as they enjoy talking about everything from the weather to people’s families on the phone.
“If you’ve got the time, and you like talking to people, it’s an excellent program to volunteer for.”
While the program has enjoyed success over the years, the pandemic brought on some challenges which the team is still trying to overcome.
Allan said the program’s occasional in-person events such as spring tea and Christmas cookie tin deliveries were put on pause, and recruiting new volunteers became a challenge.
As the program operates out of the RCMP building, volunteers must pass a security clearance check in addition to the standard background check.
“If I start adding more clients like we would like to, and I don’t have the volunteers to match, it makes it difficult,” said Allan. “The process to get a volunteer signed up and cleared to come into the building is very lengthy. A lot of people either get put off by that, since it takes around six months, so we are struggling with the volunteers situation.”
Anyone interested in applying to be a volunteer with the program is encouraged to contact the community policing section at 250-391-3367.
READ MORE: 2023 Local Hero Awards
@JSamanski
justin.samanski-langille@goldstreamgazette.com
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