Backgrounder – Government of Canada advances support for seniors in St. John’s

The New Horizons for Seniors Program (NHSP) is a federal grants and contributions program whose goal is to enhance seniors’ social inclusion and ensure they can benefit from, and contribute to, the quality of life in their communities.

The objectives of the NHSP are to:

• promote volunteerism among seniors and other generations;
• engage seniors in the community through the mentoring of others;
• expand awareness of elder abuse, including financial abuse;
• support the social participation and inclusion of seniors; and 
• provide capital assistance for new and existing community projects and programs for seniors. 

Since the introduction of the NHSP in 2004, the Government of Canada has invested more than $850 million and funded over 39,000 local projects and broader-reaching collaborative projects in hundreds of communities across Canada.

The Program funds projects that support the social inclusion of seniors via through funding streams: community-based and pan-Canadian. Approximately $50 million is provided each year to support one-year community grants through the community-based stream, and more than $13 million is allocated yearly for the pan-Canadian funding stream.

The Seniors Resource Centre Association of Newfoundland and Labrador Inc. (SeniorsNL) has proposed to work  with collaborating organizations to increase social inclusion of vulnerable seniors aged 55 and over who live in the St. John’s metropolitan area. It intends to target the needs of multiple groups of vulnerable seniors with various challenges such as physical and mental health issues, addiction, language barriers or low income. Such challenges make it more difficult to access community supports. The project is intended to foster greater integration and coordination among seniors-serving organizations to help prevent vulnerable seniors from falling through the cracks in the support system. Seniors NL would work with collaborators and continue to build a network of partner organizations who could share knowledge about systems and supports in order to develop a more seamless approach to addressing the needs of the most vulnerable seniors.

Pan-Canadian projects

The NHSP’s pan-Canadian stream funds multi-year projects that use collaborative and innovative approaches to build community capacity and increase seniors’ social inclusion. This stream provides funding of up to $5 million for projects with a duration of up to five years.

The most recent NHSP call for concepts for pan-Canadian projects ran from October 4, 2023, to November 15, 2023 and will provide up to $61.9 million for the selected concepts. The call focused on projects that would increase social inclusion among vulnerable seniors through collaborative and innovative approaches.

The objective of this call for concepts was to invite eligible organizations to submit an application that broadly describes a concept for a collective impact plan that will measurably increase the social inclusion of vulnerable seniors.

More specifically, this process aimed to:

• build the collective capacity of organizations to recognize and address barriers to social inclusion faced by vulnerable seniors
• provide access to information, programs and services for vulnerable seniors to enhance their social inclusion in their communities;
• support service to seniors as part of action research to better understand effective approaches for increasing the level of social inclusion of vulnerable seniors in their communities;
• develop innovative approaches to engage and retain senior volunteers to improve their social inclusion in their communities; and
• address systemic barriers that contribute to the social isolation of vulnerable seniors.

The call for concepts is a two-step application process. In the first step, interested organizations had to submit a concept for a proposed collective impact plan focused on the social inclusion of vulnerable seniors. Successful applicants in step one will be invited to develop a full project proposal in step two.

Selected organizations are eligible to receive between $1 million and $5 million over four to five years  for projects that create a significant impact in communities by using collaborative and innovative approaches to increase social inclusion among vulnerable seniors.

For more information, visit Funding: New Horizons for Seniors Program – Pan-Canadian projects.