A garden gained
Province gives Horticulture Centre land to Saanich. Page A5
NEWS: Part 2 of the News’ amalgamation series /A3 ARTS: Students prepare to strut their stuff /A14 SPORTS: Sights from Ford world curling /A19
SAANICHNEWS Friday, April 5, 2013
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A united home for the News in Greater Victoria The award-winning stories and photos that have made Black Press community newspapers and websites on southern Vancouver Island a must-read for years have a new digital home today. Black Press has combined the power of vicnews.com, saanichnews.com, oakbaynews.com, goldstreamgazette.com and peninsulanewsreview.com into a single website. The new site can be found at vicnews.com. “The idea is to create a site to aggregate all the news from Greater Victoria in one place,” said Kevin Laird, editorial director for Black Press-South Island. Readers will find unrivaled local content, an uncluttered format and the familiar website design all combined into one package. Along with coverage of regional news, sports, business, lifestyles and opinion, our arts news will be boosted by the addition of entertainment coverage from the staff at Monday Magazine. We’ve added premium content via local Neighborhoods, which includes local news from Oak Bay, Saanich, the West Shore and Saanich Peninsula, expanded the events calendar and links to UsedVictoria.com and Real Estate Victoria. “Readers will be happy to know that vicnews.com remains a free website focusing on what’s happening today – in breaking, local and provincial news,” Laird said. Vicnews.com is another step in Black Press’ journey through the digital age. It provides an option for getting news, information and advertising they value from Black Press publications in a digital format. If you have feedback about our new website, email your comments to editor@saanichnews.com, or visit us on Facebook or Twitter. editor@saanichnews.com
Edward Hill/News staff
Dolores Wilkinson, 79, and community services worker Alison Webb read through a book of ugly animals at the Garth Homer Centre in Saanich. Wilkinson is among the first generation of people with a developmental disability growing into old age, which is forcing government to rethink how it funds organizations that care for people with cognitive impairments.
Rise of the other ‘grey tsunami’ First generation of developmentally disabled adults reach senior years Edward Hill News staff
With The Beatles piped into her headphones and a paintbrush in hand, 52-year-old Cindy Walsh dabs watercolours onto her latest work in the Garth Homer Centre. Behind her, Dolores Wilkinson, 79, peruses a book of
funny animals with community services worker Alison Webb. Standard morning activities for the day centre for adults with developmental disabilities. Only a few decades ago Wilkinson and Walsh would have been a rare breed – the life expectancy of people with Down syndrome and other cognitive impairments was considerably lower than the general population. But they are members of the first cohort in history of developmentally disabled adults reaching their senior years in large numbers, a phenomenon
that is forcing the provincial government to rethink how it cares for a population that is aging and intensely vulnerable. “Now we are into the first generation of people with developmental disabilities who are getting old,” says Mitchell Temkin, CEO of the Garth Homer Society. “We believe community inclusion and acceptance has helped life span increase. It’s a baby boomer generation … and there’s lots of them.” The Garth Homer Centre, for one, is trying to take a leadership role in how service providers adjust to the wave of
aging adults that is yet to be accounted for through government funding. Now with 30-plus clients between age 50 and 80 in day programs, last May the centre hired Phemie Guttin, a registered nurse, as its first director of geriatric services. “I suspect the number of (senior) clients will grow quickly,” Guttin says. “This is happening in a lot of sites. We never had a significant number before, it wasn’t on the radar.” PlEASE SEE: Agency for disabled, Page A4 NEW LISTING
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