Community Knowledge Centre - Toronto Community Foundation

About this organization

Mission

SPRINT is a non profit North Toronto agency providing a broad range of high quality services to help older adults and adults with disabilities to live at home. The service also supports caregivers.

History of Organization

SPRINT is a non-profit organization in North Toronto with deep roots in the community it has served for well over 25 years. Since 1983, SPRINT has grown to an organization with 4,000 clients, 350 volunteers, and 200 full-time/part-time staff, including Personal Support Workers who help seniors age in place in the community. Services now include homecare, respite care, supportive housing care, adult day programs, meals on wheels, community dining, social work, health & wellness programs and other services. SPRINT provides services regardless of race, gender, ethnic origin, marital status, sexual orientation, citizenship or religion. Within resources available, SPRINT will not refuse services solely because of an inability to pay.

Accolades and Accomplishments

SPRINT has successfully advocated on a wide range of issues impacting seniors. We work closely with seniors’ advocacy groups such as Care Watch to ensure seniors have a voice at municipal, provincial and federal forums. Please refer to our recent Annual Reports for a detailed overview of SPRINT’s positive impact on the lives of our clients, caregivers, their families, and the community we serve.

Programs

>Adult Day Services
>House Calls

Services include homecare, respite care, supportive housing care, adult day programs, meals on wheels, community dining, social work, health & wellness programs and other services. Our programs are supported by well-trained and carefully screened volunteers. The volunteer program can be reached at 416.481-6411.

Adult Day Services

The programs run during the days, afternoons into the evenings, and on Saturdays at the Anne Johnston Health Station on Yonge Street near Eglinton Avenue. Seniors and or adults who are physically frail and/or have a cognitive impairment are offered a secure environment to participate in social and recreational activities. The program strives to support independence while focusing on the individual’s current strengths and abilities. Opportunities are provided to socialize with peers and participate in exercise and other areas of interest. The program helps prevent pre-mature or inappropriate institutionalization.

Funding and Program Partners

The Adult Day Services generously acknowledges the support from our partner Anne Johnston Health Station where the program is located. The program thanks its many volunteers from the community who enrich many of our activities. Private donors regularly provide financial support for the program and we thank the New Horizons for Seniors program for its recent capital grant (2008). We thank Toronto Central LHIN for its ongoing support for this important program.

Program Impact

While the program member receives care, family members/caregivers find respite from their caregiving responsibilities.

Toronto's Vital Signs® indicator(s) addressed by Program

“As the population ages, Toronto’s seniors will outnumber its children within 25 years:

• Toronto has the highest proportion of seniors (aged 65 and older) in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA).
• More than half of the seniors living in the GTA (53%) reside in the City of Toronto
• Seniors comprised 13.3% of the City population in 2007. Their percentage (of the total population), has grown by 2% since 1986.  
• More than 25% of seniors were living alone in 2006 (up 5.4% from 2001), increasing the challenges of social isolation.

Our city is home to 68% of low income seniors in the GTA. The number of seniors is expected to increase by 42% over 25 years, so that by 2031 they make up 17% of the City population.” (Toronto’s Vital Signs®, 2009) 

Participant Vignette

“One hundred years can go by fast’ says Centenarian in North Toronto. Be interested in everything. That’s the simple advice Gertrude Verny says she wishes to pass on to well-wishers on her 100th birthday.  She celebrated her big day on December 3rd with a party at the SPRINT Adult Day Program located at Yonge and Eglinton. 

“I never in my life painted a thing,” explains Ms. Verny as she completes a picture of purple flowers during her birthday bash. She says she first picked up a paint brush at the Adult Day Program at age 97. “I was interested in everything,” she says about her long and often difficult life. “When I’m healthy, I like to do things,” she adds. 

Wearing a large pink corsage, a double string of pearls and a white shawl on her black and white dress, Ms. Verny explains some of the hardships she faced during a century of living. She says she walked across the border from her native Czechoslovakia into Hungary to escape the Nazis. Her family was forced into hiding in Budapest. After the war, the family tried to build a life in Vienna, Austria, but in 1952, Ms. Verny, then age 40, her husband and son left everything behind again to come to Canada. Her sister already lived in Toronto.

Ms. Verny, who speaks four languages, lives independently at home with support from family and friends. She attends the SPRINT day program to meet peers and stay active. Born in 1909, she grew up at her grandmother’s house while her father served in the First World War. Her family was the envy of the neighbourhood because they had electricity coming into the house.  “One hundred years go by fast when you’re interested in everything,” says Ms. Verny. 

The SPRINT adult day program can be reached at (416) 486-8666, ext 227 or visit www.SPRINT-homecare.ca/services.

House Calls

Interdisciplinary mobile team providing primary health care to frail seniors in North Toronto.

Program Impact

• Reduced emergency room visits
• Avoid pre-mature institutionalization
• Extend opportunity to live safely at home

Toronto's Vital Signs® indicator(s) addressed by Program

“As the population ages, Toronto’s seniors will outnumber its children within 25 years:

• Toronto has the highest proportion of seniors (aged 65 and older) in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA).
• More than half of the seniors living in the GTA (53%) reside in the City of Toronto
• Seniors comprised 13.3% of the City population in 2007. Their percentage (of the total population), has grown by 2% since 1986.  
• More than 25% of seniors were living alone in 2006 (up 5.4% from 2001), increasing the challenges of social isolation.

Our city is home to 68% of low income seniors in the GTA. The number of seniors is expected to increase by 42% over 25 years, so that by 2031 they make up 17% of the City population.” (Toronto’s Vital Signs®, 2009) 

Participant Vignette

Richard Sloan served his country as a career soldier with the Royal Canadian Air Force. He gave of his time and money to charitable causes. Mr. Sloan (not his real name) loved going to the movies. He turned 80-years old in March 2008. Yet, somewhere between serving as a young man in uniform and becoming an octogenarian, Mr. Sloan turned into a recluse with no phone, no contact with any living relatives, and a deep reluctance to allow anyone to enter his very private world in a tiny, cluttered flat in North Toronto.

Mr. Sloan passed away quietly on the palliative care ward of a Toronto hospital late summer. The only people attending his funeral, organized by the Public Trustee’s Office, were his medical doctor and two SPRINT staff members.

“Richard was genuinely thankful for the help he received, even if he couldn’t articulate it all that well,” says Social Worker Tanuka Roy who coordinated the care Mr. Sloan accepted from SPRINT. “He generated goodwill from everybody who worked with him.”

SPRINT Personal Support Workers liked to bring Richard food from home although never asked to do so. It was one of those workers who called 911 when it became obvious Mr. Sloan needed to go to hospital. Our SPRINT team worked together to patched together a complex arrangement of services for Mr. Sloan. The team ensured he remained accurately informed of care choices available to him. Workers treated him respectfully as a person with valuable life experiences. We honoured this client’s desire to remain living at home as long as possible.

Can you pay someone to care? Probably not. Do SPRINT social workers and other staff care enough to ensure clients such as Mr. Sloan don’t end up on our streets or utterly forgotten in substandard housing conditions? Absolutely. Our staff make a difference in the lives of hundreds of isolated seniors and people with disabilities every day.

Mr. Sloan received support from House Calls, the interdisciplinary mobile team serving frail seniors who need primary health care.