Created by someone who has been on both sides

The professional who still found it hard

My name is Ian Ritchie. For more than three decades I worked inside Ontario's home care and social services system — as a frontline worker, a care coordinator, and eventually in leadership roles that gave me a view of the whole system.

I sat in hundreds of living rooms. I helped families understand assessments, navigate funding decisions, fight denials, find respite, and hold it all together when things felt impossible. I knew the system well.

And then my mother was diagnosed with advanced dementia.

Even with everything I knew, navigating the system for my own family — from the inside, with my own fear and grief mixed in — was one of the hardest experiences of my life. I called the wrong people. I missed things I should have caught. I watched my family struggle to make decisions without enough information.

If it was that hard for me, I knew it was nearly impossible for families without that background.

That's why Seniors Aging Forward exists. To give families a clear guide and a trusted resource — so they can focus on their loved ones instead of trying to decode a system that wasn't built for them to understand.