28 - Sunday, February 16, 1992 - North Shore News

Margaret Fulton: The backbone of volunteers

THAT LAST column,
about seniors’ health care
— and more to the point,
sickness care — didn’t un-
burden me. Usually, writing
a column gets whatever it is
out of my system and I can
go on to something else.
But there were things
discussed at that meeting
that still stick in my crop.

Eleanor
Godley

THE VINTAGE YEARS

The whole revelation of the
construction of chronic care of
seniors~ seemed to me _ heavily
dependent on chance and charity.
Such an emphasis on volunteer
help, for one.

*The- talk was largely about
neighbors and family members
.and those indefatigable selfless cit-
izens who offer themselves
openheartedly for companionship
and nursing chores. This was
punctuated with frequent, pointed
reminders of the inestimable value
of keeping the-invalid in familiar
home surroundings with familiar.
faces to lessen strain and fear.

One sees behind this, of course,
the pressing financial need that
clinches it.- The whole province,
the whole country, is desperate for
more hospital funding.

But what about the lives of the
family members and the generous
neighbors and the sturdy volun-
teers, 90% of whom have few
nursing skills and who do have
homes and children and husbands
who in turn have first-come
needs? It is they who carry the
load of actual labor, to say
nothing of the loss of private time:

’ and freedom.

The burden falls heavily on
single women whom we call
“unattached,” cruelly ordering
their lives for them, not reckoning
with their private hopes and
dreams. Many literally give their
own lives up to the prolongation
of a relative’s. Aged husbands and
wives exhaust themselves daily for
the beloved.

USE YOUR —

The “‘respites*’ that are offered
so bravely by groups wanting to
ameliorate the narrow desperation
of the care-givers’ existence are
like Pepsi-Cola signs in the desert.
There are miles of sand still to
cross.

To further muddy this scenario,
it was acknowledged amongst
those who spoke, people in charge
of these local programs, that there
are ominous signs of a growing
dearth of volunteer help.

The oft-dipped pool is drying
up, and no one could see any sort
of back-up cadre being readied to
freshen the ranks. Volunteering is
becoming too expensive, perhaps,
for women wanting paid work, or
women forced into jobs for prac-
tical reasons.

This crepuscular mood was still
upon me when | went to Margaret
Fulton Centre to join the salute to
their 20th anniversary celebration.
I had scarcely shed my coat,
though, when the mood was scot-
ched — I was introduced to the
‘lightning that is Margaret Fulton
in the flesh. What a woman! She’s
a force, Margaret is, like a
tsunami.

At Margaret Fulton Centre they
call her the Mother of All Adult
Day Cares, for it was she who
conceived of and midwifed this
very first adult day care into life,
and then set herself to recruit the
volunteers and the necessary funds
to keep it alive and growing and a
model for the whole of Canada.

She is the pith, the backbone,

the quintessence of volunteerism,
and being in her presence when
she’s going full bore is like being
in a kayak in a tide-rip.

When she first got the idea for
it, she was working for St. John’s,
and fretted about shut-ins and the
shy. She saw them as sentenced,
for lack of mobility and space, to
stultification and waste of person-
ality.

They badly needed to mingle, to
play ‘“‘Remember when?’’, to re-
mind themselves of past social
skills and the health-promoting
pleasure of shared food.

This simple rescue plan devel-
oped into the first adult day care
centre in Canada, and became the
model for all that followed.

Our own province has some-

thing like 45, now. And it was
Margaret who kept encouraging
and planning and spreading the
call for help and for helpers.

To her joy, out of its members
grew the plans for the first ever .
stroke assistance group. People
damaged thus, most often men,
can share speech therapy and
remedial exercises. That idea has
multiplied too.

It’s a significant example of
what stubborn idealism can ac-
complish, and also of the strength
of compassion and _ selflessness.
Maybe we’d be smart to start
making down payments on our
own future health care by exten-
ding a helping hand now? The
perfect route to getting to know
the ropes.

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