Business View - August 2015 149
HEALTHCARE
and future needs of our residents,” says Sinclair. “And
it’s not only awesome for the seniors but it really helps
support our whole health care system, because if you
can put the services in place and build these mini-
communities, you’re going to keep your seniors more
well, so that they’re not getting critically ill and requir-
ing 911 and ending up in emergency rooms in hospi-
tals, so it really is fulfilling a lot of needs.”
The Georgian Village complex was ten years in the
making. But now that it’s been established, Sinclair
and the County of Simcoe are planning ahead for
the next several years. They recently received fund-
ing to develop a long-term “senior strategy” with far-
reaching implications: “We’re going to be developing
a framework that will not only be used for the county
of Simcoe, but we will be partnering with all the local
municipalities to see how we can collectively support
seniors across the county. That will be a very formal-
ized plan and we literally will be looking at every type
of service that we provide; everything from our roads,
infrastructure, transportation, to paramedic services
to all the various types of social services to see what
are the priorities for the seniors population. We want
to develop this framework so as we go forward with the
planning, whether it’s developments or different types
of services, we have this framework to refer to, so that
we can build in those priorities to all of our future plan-
ning needs. We’re very excited about it. It will really
help us plan over the next ten or twenty years how to
better serve the seniors population.”
According to Sinclair, the County of Simcoe’s mission
is clear and forthright: “We’re here to serve. That’s our
mandate, plain and simple. We’re here to provide the
best level and the most appropriate level of service
that we possibly can. And I think our Council is very
progressive in that they foster that and they encourage
us to look at new ways of doing things.”
Simcoe County may have been providing its senior ser-
vices for over a century, but this is one municipality
that continues to stay very much ahead of the curve.
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