We are counting down to the 43rd annual Weyburn Communithon, which is just two days away now! The annual telethon will be going from 8 a.m. to 11 p.m. this Friday live from the Weyburn Legion.
The eighth and final community agency taking part in Communithon this year is Spinal Cord Injury Saskatchewan.
Delynne Bortis with the organization said they'll have two Client Service Coordinators coming down from Saskatoon for the event, with funds going toward their Client Services.
"Our Client Service Coordinators are in touch with all their clients throughout the year, probably two to three times if they are not actively receiving services, so that they're checked in on, 'do you need any services? What can we do to assist you? Here's something new that we're offering'."
She said even if they are not actively requesting support services, clients are still in regular contact with their Client Service Coordinators, who serve several clients in the Weyburn area.
Services include Rehabilitation, Education and Employment, Community Inclusion and Awareness, which also involves accessibility strategies, and Information and Systems Navigation.
"So encompassed within our rehabilitation services, there are things like one-on-one peer support group support, which is virtual support for people that are living with spinal cord injury or other physical disabilities. We also offer supports in areas like access equipment, assistive housing and leisure, so information on those things and how people can access them."
Bortis said there are different programs that enable clients to access equipment, acting as a conduit between SCIS, the client, and other community-based organizations.
"We also are in the process of implementing a family support network which would support families of people living with spinal cord injury and other physical disabilities as well, in a broader basis, where it would be more of a peer support for family members, not just the person that's affected by the disability."
For education and employment, SCIS has supports for people who are going back to school or they're looking to get into the employment field.
"There might be some assistive technology that we can offer them that would make that easier for them or assist them in looking for courses that lie with their interest and do some adaptations on different things with them," she noted.
"Community inclusion and awareness involves collaborating and networking with stakeholders, doing some inclusion facilitation, strategic planning, and we participate on different committees and government consultations. So trying to look to reduce barriers that are in different communities."
System navigation helps by providing information and navigation for clients and families, employers, agencies, and government agencies.
"This is quite often really important when people are transitioning from hospital to home and they don't know where to go to get the information they need to access the services they need, and that's where we'll step in and assist them with finding where they need to go, what they need to do, and help them just with general overall navigation."
Bortis said multiple different neurological disabilities encompass their services. "Anything, basically, that affects mobility, we work with them."
"So, people that have Parkinson's disease, arthritis, MS. There's also disabilities that people have from birth, such as cerebral palsy, spina bifida, even amputation," she shared. "Non-traumatic injuries like surgery, tumors, infections in the spinal cord, different viruses like Guillain-Barré syndrome. So there is quite a larger group of people that utilize our services that don't just have spinal cord injuries."
No matter how one comes to be a client of SCIS, the Client Service Coordinators and virtual peer support are key for the lifestyle changes involved.
"They can be in touch very easily either through e-mail, through virtual means, through telephone, so we've been able to be more far-reaching with our peer support services and quite often those are with people that are newly experiencing a disability, but sometimes it's somebody that's in a different area of their life and it's just that they feel they need support because things are changing."
"Maybe their mobility is decreasing or their function or they're finding themselves weaker so things that they could do before they may not be able to do anymore, and that's a little bit challenging, not only physically but mentally. That's where we can kind of step in with the peer support offer that support from a person that's been living with the injury or the disability for a while and say, 'hey, these are some of the things that I dealt with as well. These are some of the things that I did that helped me' and it just gives the person a feeling of having somebody else that's there that understands."
She noted that one of their long-term peer support groups is the Women's Circle, which has been growing in membership since 2012.
As for the big event on Friday, Bortis added, "I hope that the event is awesome and very successful."
The other community agencies that will benefit from the annual telethon are CMHA Weyburn Branch, Big Brothers Big Sisters Weyburn, the Canadian National Institute for the Blind, the Weyburn Care-A-Van Society, Southeast Advocates, Envision Counselling & Support Centre, and Inclusion Weyburn.
Follow the Weyburn Communithon on Facebook, and find out more on the Communithon website.