A positive approach to aging

DR JENNIFER ROUSE is well-suited to the task of spearheading the formation of the Division of Aging in the Ministry of Social Development. The request to head the Division as its first Director was made to this vibrant woman in August 2003, two months before completion of her doctoral  dissertation at the University of Maryland. “They wanted me here so I had  to finish two chapters of the thesis here and at the same time bring the  Division from Ground Zero to the point we have reached today.”  Rouse, who never started college until age 43 and is now taking back up a career, or actually changing careers at age 53, is a beacon for all women who believe they are too old to start studying or change the course of  their lives. Jenny Rouse attended Bishop Anstey Junior/High School from  age five until A levels. On leaving school she worked mostly with  airlines, LIAT, TTAS and finally British West Indian Airways, until she accepted the company’s Voluntary Separation Plan in June 1995.

She did dance, computer classes and the SAT exams until December 1995, when she converted her VSEP into US dollars and entered Cape Fear Community College in North Carolina to study Behavioural Psychology in  January 1996. But three months later, on advice from a Trinidadian  Professor Dr Acklyn Lynch, she transferred to the University of Maryland where  she completed all three degrees in 7 ? years- the Bachelor of Arts in  Social Work and Africana Studies, with a double major in two years, cum  laude; a Masters in Public Policy in Ageing Issues and her PhD in Public  Policy.  “I chose North Carolina because I wanted to go somewhere where I knew no one, no family and no friends to confuse me” says this indomitable  woman. “I bought a car for US$900 and got a driver’s licence, learned the route to school, lived in a house alone and told myself wherever that money took me I was willing  to go.”

The youngest of the late Ivan BJ Rouse’s nine children, Jenny  knew about the importance of education from her father, a former school principal and inspector of schools “who breathed and lived  education.” “My father alwys wanted all of us to go to college so when I  went and told him I am leaving BWEE and going back to school, he told me, ‘You are doing it my way now’. I promised to do it in a shorter time because  he wanted to be alive which he was when I graduated in May 1998. I paid  him a surprise visit at Christmas ’98 and was already in graduate school.” Four months later, in April 1999, Ivan Rouse died “He  waited until I finished. He knew I was already in the Master’s programme but he also knew I was going to finish.”  Why the study of “aging?” Dr Rouse explains: “It is as if this role  was destined from very early. I was the eyeball of my maternal grandmother who lived with us until she passed away at 83, my parents were 46 and 40  years when I was born so I was already in the ageing gene pool with a  grandmother who loved me and I loved her.

“Also I spent 20 years with BWEE,  the last seven of which were as assistant accountant in the Pensions and  Provident Fund Department where I dealt with retirement issues. It was  just as if I drifted into aging and everything happened by accident. I did  not leave Trinidad to get a PHd, just to get a Bachelors that would get me  a better salary so that I could live comfortably. Because I did well, my professors encouraged me to go on toward the doctorate in public policy  and of the seven areas of concentration I chose aging.” As a student collecting research data for her doctoral thesis, “A Case Study of Ageing Policy in Trinidad and Tobago - the role of interested  groups in defining new policy initiatives”, Jenny flew back and forth from  Maryland to collect data from the very Ministry in which she has ended up  as the first director. “Not knowing I would be eventually working here,” she noted. “According to one of my Professors, there is only a point zero zero zero one+3. percent of doctoral  students who get to use their theses, very seldom it happens, so it was  synchronicity and connecting all the dots I realise the road was being  paved for me.” 

Last August, on her second anniversary as head of the Division, Dr  Rouse was pleased that “we are on target in establishing the infrastructure  for the Division.” The Division is developing programmes and projects in  accordance with the national budget for 2006, which highlighted Senior Centres, Meals on Wheels, and “The Continuum of Health and Social Support Services for older persons.” The Senior Centres, already approved by  Cabinet, are multi-service facilities which will cater for healthy, active  seniors, engaging in activities planned by them and the NGO’S which will  manage the Centres. “Overall we are on target with what has been planned for the first two years, and we are now at the point of delivering some of the programmes as  outlined in the national budget for 2006” says Dr Rouse. “I recognise  what existed when I came in were just ad hoc programmes for older persons.  This Division therefore will now serve as an umbrella agency to co-ordinate  all ageing initiatives for older citizens of Trinidad and Tobago.”