Students Partner With Older Adults to Combat Pandemic Isolation

UConn Today reports that 10 University of Connecticut (UConn) School of Social Work students in the Master of Social Work and Bachelor of Social Work programs are partnering with older adults in Hartford and the surrounding region to help fight isolation during the pandemic as part of the Social isolation/Loneliness Intergenerational Project (SLIP). The students are each matched with four or five seniors, most of whom typically visit Hartford senior communities run by Catholic Charities, communicating by phone or video chat twice weekly. The students will be trained to perform reminiscence therapy and life review techniques, using them to foster connections with their senior matches. Participants' loneliness will be assessed at the beginning and end of the eight-week project. Visits will initially be phone-based since most seniors are comfortable with that mode of communication, but may graduate to video calls if they show interest, possibly using the OneClick.chat platform. The platform is designed for ease of use by older adults, and the U.S. National Institutes of Health has funded studies on its use in combating social isolation. UConn Professor Rupal Parekh says SLIP offers "a way to introduce students to how wonderful it can be to work with older adults. It's critical that we do that in the School of Social Work."