The following letter was sent to Health Minister Kevin Falcon and copied to Coast Reporter.
Dear Mr. Falcon:
We were recently informed that, due to lack of funding, Vancouver Coastal Health is being forced to cancel the Lunch Bunch program for seniors, which has been running successfully for many years at very small cost to the taxpayer.
It provides an opportunity every two weeks for a group of approximately 20 seniors and volunteer drivers to have lunch together at a restaurant in either Gibsons or Sechelt. It is well documented by the health professionals who look after the mental well-being of our seniors that the benefits of this type of program are enormous.
Some of our clients have no family living on the Coast; others live alone or are in care facilities. Those who do live with their relatives enjoy socializing with their contemporaries and at the same time the two or three hours away provides their caregivers with an opportunity to do something for themselves.
Many of our clients have little to look forward to in their declining years. Inevitably they have health problems, both mental and physical, and mobility issues. Perhaps the most depressing of all, their friends are dying.
If we are a caring society, we must do what we can for those who can no longer care for themselves. Enormous sums of money have been spent by your government in recent months to upgrade the Sea to Sky Highway. Surely the small amount needed to keep this program going could be found very quickly indeed by a caring Minister.
Frances M. Heppell
Gibsons
