Organizations that aim to help seniors strongly suggest that senior citizens build their own personal support network that would be there on-call when needed. A personal support network is a group of people who are close to you and would not mind checking on your situation every now and then. This same group would also attend to your immediate needs when it happens instead of relying on others whom you haven’t enlisted help of.

Creating your own personal support network is fairly easy especially if you are a very sociable person to begin with. Naturally, a senior who is well-loved by his or her community would have volunteers in and out of her comfort zones, making it a lot easier to choose your best and most trusted ones out of the pack. When building your personal support network, your best candidate would be someone who lives close to your place so he or she will be close at hand. The best strategy for picking is working your way from inside going out. This will include your roommates, housemates, househelp, neighbors, friends and families. Also, consider your everyday activities and places you frequent such as work and home. Find people within those areas as well, preferably one for each area when you’re physically present there. This means, when you go to work, then you volunteer and after that you go home, it is best to find 3 different people to share a task. This way, you’re assured that you’ll have help when you need it.

Here are some important tasks or assignments you need to assign your volunteers. Designate these assignments well according to the person’s strength and capabilities. Surely, you won’t need a frail, old lady to be your designated emergency girl to help you get to the nearest hospital when an emergency strikes. Here are some important points you need to discuss with your personal support network:

·    Your emergency team. Ideally, they should know how to drive so that when you need to go to the hospital and could no longer drive yourself there, one phone call and you know you’ll get there in time. If you cannot find anyone who can drive you to the hospital, at least get someone who has a telephone and knows the right numbers to call.
·    After an emergency, you need someone to check on you from time to time, especially if you’re living alone.
·    Emergency teams are not formed for medical purposes only. They can also be for natural calamities such as floods, earthquakes and others. Usually in these situations, unified community effort is called for.
·    Find someone you trust whom you can leave important keys like house keys and car keys. This should be your daughter, son, or your bestfriend.
·    Share important documents with someone you fully trust. This could be your attending attorney.
·    When going away for longer periods of time, inform someone of your expected time and date of departure and arrival.

Lastly, don’t forget to say thank you and reciprocate when you can. When you express your feelings of sincerity, it won’t be impossible to receive the same favor from others.