Most New Zealanders dread chronic ill health in old age but research suggests they should be more concerned about loneliness. Forty-four percent of older New Zealanders say they are lonely, with at least 45,000 “severely lonely”. Research indicates that loneliness and social isolation can lead to a range of serious health and social problems, including heart disease, stroke, dementia, depression and entry into rest home care.
Churchgoers have responded to this hidden problem by developing and participating in programmes that alleviate social isolation by visiting the loneliest people in our communities. ANGELA SINGER reports.
Age Concern’s Accredited Visiting Service (AVS) has been operating for 20 years and offers a safe way for lonely older people to receive visits from a volunteer. More than 1700 older people, who are 80 percent female and 68 percent living alone, receive AVS visits.
AVS volunteer visitors, many of whom are churchgoers, are trained, monitored and supported by coordinators, who match them with elderly clients living alone who have similar interests. Weekly visits to the client’s home usually last an hour. However, visitors and clients can choose to have longer visits.
Wellingtonian Nishanie Pereira visits Norma for two hours each week. Nishanie was matched with Norma by AVS when her PhD studies brought her to New Zealand two years ago. She says spending time with older people is the norm in Sri Lanka, where she is from.
“In Eastern cultures, older people are respected for the contributions they have made to society and their families. It is considered a privilege to be able to listen to their lived experiences.”
Recently Norma was unable to continue living alone in her home and began to look for a suitable rest home. Nishanie visited these with her. During one such visit, “we were walking back to the bus stop and Norma asked if I would continue to visit her at the rest home”.
The AVS programme only covers people living in their own homes, but Nishanie is still visiting her friend. “I also saw this as a way of enabling Norma to reduce anxiety associated with the change.”
Nishanie says that Age Concern did “a really good job of matching us”.
“Spending time with Norma puts my life, my anxieties and my worries into perspective. Nothing seems scary after talking to Norma. She advises me, listens to me and sheds new light on things in my world. She also refocuses me and gives me new outlets to use my energy.”
Nishanie, who studies full time and works part time, says she sets aside the same time each week for their visits. “If I am behind on work, I come to the office on the weekend to catch up instead of using the Friday afternoon. My friends know they can’t get me between 3 pm to 5 pm Friday. I only spend a very small amount of time with Norma and I give her my undivided attention”.
Nishanie also tries to phone Norma at least once mid week to “find out what she is interested in so I can do a wee bit of preparation and look for things online or check something out of the library”.
How they spend their time together is entirely up to Norma, Nishanie says. “When she was at home we would go shopping or see an exhibition at Te Papa.” In colder weather, Norma prefers to stay in doors. They both like reading and introducing each other to new authors. Nishanie has shown Norma how to use her computer; how to email to keep in touch, how to search online and how to view video clips. Norma says she tries to send one email a day, “and just doing that has made a huge difference as it has put me in touch with my young relatives and friends”.
Norma says it is a long time since she thought of Nishanie as her AVS visitor rather than as a close friend. Nishanie “has a cultural influence where she has sensitivity to the elderly and a genuine regard that you do not often see in young people today. Who wouldn’t respond to that?” Norma says.
All week long, Norma looks forward to Nishanie’s Friday visit. “She comes regularly and I know I get her undivided attention. I miss having undivided attention; it’s something I had from my husband when we were happily married for 40 years. When he died, I lived on my own for 10 years. I can really talk to Nishanie because she is a dear friend. I have gotten to know her husband too. There are so many things that I would never have explored without Nishanie.”
Being taken care of at the rest home is something Norma is still getting used to. “I am recently out of being independent, living alone; I’m not used to living at close quarters with complete strangers. I’m not complaining, I can’t be at my own home and I like it at this new home. It’s not a home where I have to adapt to it; they let me make decisions.”
Norma says Nishanie has helped her to set weekly goals. “One is to try to have a weekly conversation and watch that I do not do all the talking. I am quite deaf and I have friends who are profoundly deaf, and people here at the home are mostly deaf so talking isn’t hard, everyone wants to talk; listening is the problem. Now on the phone to Nishanie I begin by saying ‘hi, what’s new’ because before she couldn’t get a word in! I firmly believe you are never too old to learn.”
Another programme aimed at alleviating the loneliness of older people living alone has recently been started by Presbyterian Support Northern. “Connecting the Generations” was initiated by Anne Overton, PSN’s community mission liaison, and pairs an older person in need of company with a student from St Kentigern College, Auckland.
Selina, a client of Presbyterian Support’s Enliven service, says that since early this year she has been doubly blessed to be visited by Fie Anderson and Jade Crawford, two St Kentigern College students. She says she can’t stress enough how much she enjoys the girls’ visits.
“They are very bright, polite and caring. When you are home alone day after day, it is wonderful to know you will have company to talk about all sorts of things with once a week. I really appreciate their time.”
Selina says her family do not visit regularly, “they come and go, so when I get sick and go to hospital they don’t know”.
Fie and Jade are interested in her life story, Selina says, because it is so very different to their own. “It really surprised the girls to learn how hard I had it. I came to New Zealand a young woman alone and without a job or a school. I had to find work and earn money to send home so I worked during the day and went to school at night and I went without lunch to save. I was able to buy a home and bring my family out to New Zealand, one by one. I wanted them to be educated and today some of my nieces have university degrees.”
Learning to share the little she had with family and others who arrived in New Zealand with nothing was very hard, Selina says, “but when you have little you learn to budget very carefully. The girls tell me about their generation; they have things so much easier, they can have what they want and at their age I couldn’t. I tell them they are very lucky they do not have to go through what I did.”
That her own nieces and nephews are reluctant to send money back home is disheartening for Selina. “They say that those back home should stand on their own two feet but helping family should remain important in our community. Young people should learn to care for others.”
Fie says that becoming a regular weekly visitor to Selina was an easy decision as she misses her grandparents. “I’ve lived in different countries overseas with my parents most of my life so I have not had much time with my grandparents.”
The first few times that Fie and Jade visited Selina they spoke about “news and current events and our lives and backgrounds. One thing that Selina has been keen to talk with us about is drinking. We told her that we go out at the weekends and go to parties and she thinks that isn’t good; girls didn’t go out in her day, she had to make money to send home to Tonga. She says booze is pointless, a waste of money.”
Fie says Selina has definitely had an impact on her and Jade’s lives. “We sit in awe listening to her telling us of the things that she has gone through. Selina came here from Tonga alone, her parents wanted her to get an education but she was very isolated and worked hard to support her family. She said everything was strange and different here; in Tonga no one locked their cars.”
One of the differences that Fie has noticed between her generation and Selina’s is the way they communicate. “Selina is far more talkative than we are; we will send a text instead of having a conversation. When we talk with Selina she has a good laugh at us for saying ‘like’ a lot”.
It has been fun, Fie says, for her and Jade “to have opened Selina’s life up a bit with new technology”.
“It was a challenge. Getting Selina to be able to move the mouse from one side of the screen to the other took ages and she laughed and laughed; it was a real eye opener to Jade and I as we just use computers without thinking.”
Fie says she will soon move again with her parents, this time to Chicago in the United States. “I knew we would be moving when I began visiting Selina so I brought Jade along on visits to take over.” Fie says that Selina is a bit sad about her leaving and is counting down the number of visits they have left.
Before they began visiting Selina, Fie says she thinks she spent a lot of time in her bed not doing very much. Fie has been reflecting on who might be there for her in old age. “I’m an only child, no siblings to rely on. I don’t think I can rely on friends either as they might need people to care for them. I hope that family will care for me so I know I need to take care of them.”
For Jade Crawford, the desire to visit Selina came from the recent loss of her grandfather. “I’d been thinking about how I helped my grandparents when I went to see them, how they were always so happy to see me and I don’t think I really appreciated how much my visits meant to them. I want to support Selina now in that way.”
Selina is, Jade says, very conscious of “the differences in teenagers today compared to the teenagers of her adolescent years. She has noticed the trends toward less clothing and more alcohol, but instead of being disgusted I feel like she is open-minded and concerned about safety and morals. I sometimes tell her about problems teenagers like me have”.
“Virtually every time we visit she mentions how much our visits mean to her and how grateful she is. I don’t think she realises how much she gives back to us. I hope that I can better show her this in the future.”
*If your parish would like to take part in the AVS visitor service, contact your local Age Concern or their national office on
(04) 801 9338.
*Auckland parishes that would like to be involved in Connecting the Generations can contact Anne Overton at Presbyterian Support Northern on (09) 520-8624. If you would like to help run Connecting the Generations in your region, contact Anne or your local Presbyterian Support Enliven office.