Senior Connections gives hope and joy to residents
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Senior Connections is about giving and caring, hope for those without hope, and a new friend for someone who almost has forgotten how it is to be loved.
A program of The Singer Institute, Senior Connections provides warmth, hope and joy for nursing home residents through specially trained companions called relational volunteers.
While isolation can lead to depression, despair, detachment and even premature death, it doesn’t have to be that way. And community volunteers find that when they form new relationships with nursing home residents, those seniors still have much to contribute to the lives of others.
Art Gruettemeyer, one of the volunteers, wholeheartedly agrees. “It makes me feel good. ... It’s an experience everyone should have if they can do it,” he said.
His volunteering started when he read an item about Senior Connections in the St. Louis Review two years ago. The retiree went to a training program called the Good Neighbor Course that was developed by The Singer Institute staff with the St. Louis University Department of Geriatric Psychiatry.
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