Government social-protection schemes provide a vital safety net for poor older people in rural Jamaica, but many are missing out on their entitlements. Since 2003, our partner, the St Catherine Community Development Agency (SACDA), has been supporting older people in three poor farming communities in St Catherine's Parish.

The project helps older people to monitor their access to three government social-protection programmes – a small cash benefit for poor households and two subsidised-drugs schemes – and lobby the authorities for improvements.

Aims

Supported by the UK Department for International Development (DFID), the aims of the project are to:

• monitor the effectiveness of JADEP and NHF (subsidised-drugs schemes) and PATH (income-security scheme) in reducing poverty among older people
• develop the capacity of SACDA and older people to undertake monitoring
• advocate for changes to JADEP, NHF and PATH so as to improve the delivery of services to older people.

Activities

Older people elected as project leaders visit other older people in their neighbourhood to talk about the programmes, find out who is accessing them and what problems they are having.

They bring their findings to senior citizens' club meetings and agree how to follow up – for example, by visiting pharmacies to encourage them to participate in the subsidised-drugs scheme, and petitioning the Ministry of Labour and Social Security to speed up registration for the income-security scheme.

Achievements

In February 2005, older people spoke to government representatives at a meeting in the capital, Kingston, highlighting numerous reasons why the government was failing to reach older people in rural areas.

Older people have also used the training received from SACDA to advocate on other issues, such as the poor state of the roads, and the distribution of resources after Hurricane Ivan ravaged Jamaica in September 2004.

In St Catherine's Parish, five out of nine pharmacies are now taking part in the JADEP programme. This reduces the distance and costs incurred by older people needing to secure drugs. Previously, older people had cited examples of paying US$5 to collect a US$10 benefit.

The manager of Betta Pharmacy in St Catherine's Parish said: “We have applied to register for the programmes because patients have come in and asked us – people of different ages and for different health reasons.”

The number of older people receiving benefits under all of the schemes has increased. For example, numbers in the JADEP programme have risen from 39 to 140 out of an eligible parish population of 220 (there are 244 older people in the parish). JADEP provides subsidised drugs with a "prescription fee" of US$0.70.

The future

The findings from the project have impressed the government’s social- policy evaluation team. As a result, SACDA has been invited onto its consultation panel to help develop indicators to track progress towards goals relating to older people.