There are twenty thousand older persons in Belize - and that is twenty thousand people that the National Council on Ageing says Belize's social and healthcare system is unable to adequately care for. But the council says you can't solve the problem of caring for the elderly by building more Sister Cecilia Homes to house them in. According to these experts on this much neglected field, part of the solution is training people to care for older persons in their homes. That began this week with the training of trainers, those on the frontline of caring for the elderly. Four professors from Florida International University in Miami are leading the workshop. Dr. Yvonne Parchment says everyone had better listen up, because we'll all get old some day.
Dr. Yvonne Parchment, FIU Professor
"We teach them what can happen as you get older. And so if you think about yourself, 'what would I like for myself, how do I take care of myself now that I am younger and what would happen when I get older,' so that you know when you are dealing with these older adults. It is to sort of understand what they are going through. It is a pressure on them and so when we talk, we are going to talk about stress relief also because for these older adults it is stressful on them and it is very stressful on the care giver so we teach these folks ways to diffuse that stress, how to get help."
Lindy Jeffrey, National Council on Aging
"We are responding to all the organizations who are saying that as the years go by, people are aging and we still have limited resources in this country to care for older persons. We only have three residential homes but there are seeing an increasing demand on their resources as service providers. So bearing that in mind, we are providing training for all these people so they can go back into their organizations, back into the community, and train others in all the aspects of care that the trainers are here today doing."
The workshop continues tomorrow at the Radisson Hotel. On Friday a third workshop will be held in the Toledo District.
