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By Faye Lessans, Justice and Legal Thought Scholar
The Adopt-a-Grandfriend program will provide residents with companionship in order to reduce social isolation through pairing up residents with young adults who will visit them on a weekly basis throughout the semester.
My service-learning project is very important to addressing ageism in our society, as well as the feelings of isolation that nursing home residents might face as a result of psychological issues, socio-economic issues, and technological issues. On a psychological level, many residents feel isolated because they do not have energy left in them to go through the effort of making new friends in nursing homes when so many of their old friends have passed away. Nursing home residents might therefore operate under the fixed mindset of, ‘why go through the effort of making new friends when they will just die anyway?’ This mindset can be extremely isolating. Additionally, society’s stigmatization of old age as a result of ageism is often internalized by elderly nursing home residents. This internalized stigmatization of old age often leads residents to distance themselves from other residents because they do not want to accept the fact that they are elderly. This causes many nursing home residents to turn inward. During the Covid-19 pandemic, these feelings of social isolation have only been amplified as many residents have not been able to see their loved ones for a year. This is why the Adopt-a-Grandfriend program that I have created, which will be up and running in the Fall, is essential to the psychological wellbeing of residents at the Hebrew Home.