ASSESSING THE IMPACT OF A SENIORS' PEER COUNSELING PROGRAM

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Abstract
An important goal of any adult education program is to enable adults to take a more active role in developing their social, political, and economic futures. Seniors' peer counseling is an informal support service that uses the senior population as lay counselors to their more needy peers. The purpose of this paper will be to outline some of the unique features of the social context and the training program of the seniors' peer counseling program at Century House in New Westminster, British Columbia. Eighteen seniors completed an 18‐month training program. This particular model was designed not only to train counseling skills but to assist participants in taking a more active role in developing and maintaining the program. Results from a quasiexperimental design showed significant increase in helping skills and in the ability to compensate for sensory losses; informal evaluative procedures suggested additional benefits of the program to clients, participants, and professionals in the community. Documentation of the development of control and responsibility suggests that the program was effective in enabling seniors to play a more active part in defining the network of community support.