The city is reaching out for funding for an initiative to help keep Prince George seniors safer in their homes.
City council has given administration approval to apply for a 2013 Age-Friendly Community Planning and Project Grant from the Union of BC Municipalities. The maximum grant of $20,000 would facilitate the city and their partners taking action to reduce the fear of crime amongst seniors and ensuring that seniors who live in high-risk areas have working smoke alarms.
"This is something we are aware of and there have been studies done about a direct correlation between high-risk areas and fire and certainly seniors would be at risk if they were in those areas," said Mayor Shari Green at the Oct. 29 city council meeting. "This is a very interesting project and I'm hoping it will be successful."
City communications and citizen engagement manager Chris Bone was part of a September delegation to Surrey to learn more about their comprehensive crime reduction strategy.
"Our intent is to mirror Surrey's approach," said Bone, who is working with the RCMP, Community Policing, Prince George Fire Rescue and the Prince George Council of Seniors to put together the funding proposal and subsequent local strategy.
The proposal would look at the best way to communicate to seniors the realities of crime in Prince George.
"And we're thinking, at this stage, that those might be in the form of some neighbourhood-based workshops that look at a whole range of things that are of interest to seniors related to personal safety. Like fraud and scams, home safety, safety in their vehicle," Bone said.
The Surrey model also demonstrated that by mapping out high-risk areas for break and enters as well as fire and medical response calls, first responders were able to target which homes needed smoke alarms and offered to install them for those who needed them.
"And while they were in the home, they were able to do lots of things like a visual look around to make sure people were safe in their homes and to report anything untoward that might be a crime-related issue to the RCMP," Bone explained.
This yielded a decrease in incidences of fire and medical calls as well as break and enter crimes, she said.
Here in Prince George, Bone said the distribution of smoke alarms would likely be in conjunction with the aforementioned community-based workshops.
"One of the values of this approach is that by enhancing seniors' safety in a community you're actually working to enhance safety for everybody in the community and the ability to develop and deliver information about the actual reality of crime in our community is really important," said Bone.
This involves arming people with facts as opposed to anecdotal information, she explained.
The work which would be funded by the UBCM grant, if the application is successful, would be in complement to the work already being carried out locally.
"We already have a really active community policing arm that does quite a lot of work with seniors around fraud and scams and home safety things that they can do to make sure they're personally safe in their residence," Bone said. "And I think those are all really valuable things to do in a community."
