“Aging is really about moving through time”: Community Connectors program combats social isolation in seniors

Written for The Aquinian

(‘Moving through time’ by Incé Husain)

St. Thomas University’s pilot Community Connectors program strives to alleviate social isolation in seniors by distributing information about opportunities for engagement in the community.

Set to launch in January, the program involves a network of volunteers with Meals on Wheels who will serve as information sources for those who seek community activities.

The method of outreach to seniors will be casual, with volunteers trained to strike up conversation and identify features in small talk that might indicate isolation; then, they will warmly share opportunities for social connection in the community. This will also promote preexisting local initiatives.

Albert Banerjee, the New Brunswick Health Research Foundation chair in Community Health and Aging at STU, proposed the program in 2020 to address isolation in a “group of people that was not being reached”. He says that the driving force of the program is to reshape the dialogue around how isolation is discussed, rephrasing the issue as one of social connection. 

“Ultimately it’s about a conversation - that’s the heart of it,” says Banerjee. “I would rather talk about opportunities for connection and engagement. If you’re addressing (isolation), you might as well talk about connection… (rather than) the problems… It changes the happiness valence.”

Banerjee says the goal of the pilot is to make mistakes and learn from them so that the program can be refined. He hopes that the program can be shared with other local organizations such that it becomes self-sustaining and ingrained in Fredericton’s social fabric. 

He conceptualizes freedom and quality of life as access to adequate social support and education rather than a function of age, and believes that our “age-segregated” Fredericton society medicalizes aging instead of humanizing it.

“We tend to keep young and old people apart,” says Banerjee of Fredericton society.  “We know about the body (as it ages) but we don’t pay attention to what happens in terms of biography or narrative or wisdom or creativity. Aging is really about moving through time… (It’s about) recognizing that we are all vulnerable.”

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Lyne Ouellet is a PhD student at the University of New Brunswick in interdisciplinary studies, and works with Banerjee as a research coordinator. From her experiences working in clinical settings, she is committed to advocating for older adults, and adopted the Community Connectors project as her research thesis. 

“Social isolation is so multifactorial - not only one solution can do it all,” says Ouellet, sharing that her research will explore logistics, effectiveness, appropriateness, and the idea of wielding “conversation as an instrument”.

The program has undergone three rounds of funding and collaboration with provincial and federal public health agencies. Ouellet describes the program as “the outer layer of the onion” in addressing social isolation, and says that communities in Fredericton will bring the topic to a more individualized level. 

“We are an information source,” says Ouellet. “We identify the lonely, connect them to a resource, and other programs will localize on how to help their integration into the programs.”

Ouellet says the project began with the idea of assessing the usefulness of local community organizations and initiatives, then led to an inductive approach where the elderly were interviewed about their experiences with isolation. Finally, Ouellet came across a video of a Community Connectors model used in the UK, where its scope extends to loneliness in all age groups. She is trying to adapt the UK model to Fredericton’s culture and resources, and hopes that the program will eventually encompass all vulnerable populations.

“I’m very hopeful,” says Ouellet of the project. “The issue of isolation and loneliness - no one is immune to it.  I’m hopeful that we can help out people who really could benefit from things out there that they don’t even know could help them.” ♦

A modified version of this article appeared in The Aquinian on November 4th, 2022:

https://theaquinian.net/community-connectors-combat-isolation-in-senior-new-brunswickers/