Magazine

How CT nursing home staff work to reduce social isolation

By Joshua Zatul­skis | UConn Jour­nal­ism
May 15, 2025

Dawn Bakke, intern admin­is­tra­tor at Card Home for the Aged in Willi­man­tic, says she believes giv­ing res­i­dents dif­fer­ent things to do enables every­one to feel more con­nect­ed. Pho­to by Joshua Zatul­skis

Dur­ing the height of the 2020 COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, res­i­dents at Card Home for the Aged in Willi­man­tic often gath­ered in the din­ing room to sing their favorite songs from the 1960s, like “Brown Eyed Girl” and “Can’t Help Falling in Love.”

“It doesn’t have to be pret­ty, it was just some­thing to do,” res­i­dent Gun­nel Sten­berg recalls. 

The sin­ga­longs were a way to com­bat a seri­ous side-effect of the pan­dem­ic lock­downs. COVID like­ly con­tributed to an increase in social iso­la­tion and lone­li­ness among nurs­ing home res­i­dents, researchers at McMas­ter Uni­ver­si­ty in Cana­da found in 2021. Old­er peo­ple were hit the hard­est social­ly by COVID rules that lim­it­ed or barred vis­its from fam­i­ly and friends. 

Although the pan­dem­ic is to blame for a big increase in social iso­la­tion, there may be oth­er rea­sons such iso­la­tion has become preva­lent. Accord­ing to the CDC, about one-third of adults report feel­ings of social iso­la­tion. These feel­ings can have neg­a­tive health impacts that include heart dis­ease, stroke, Type 2 dia­betes, depres­sion, anx­i­ety and demen­tia.  

Dawn Bakke, intern admin­is­tra­tor at Card Home for the Aged, says she believes fam­i­ly plays a big part. 

“It depends on the amount of fam­i­ly some­one has. Now with the Boomers get­ting old­er, you see a lot of peo­ple who don’t real­ly have fam­i­ly. I would say with that gen­er­a­tion there’s more of an uptick,” Bakke said.  

The job for retire­ment home staffers is to become like a fam­i­ly to the res­i­dents. For some peo­ple, com­ing into a retire­ment home is their first time liv­ing alone. Bakke says she believes giv­ing res­i­dents oppor­tu­ni­ties and dif­fer­ent things to do enables every­one to feel more con­nect­ed.  

At Card Home for the Aged, which caters to inde­pen­dent retirees who can pret­ty much take care of them­selves and are in good health, oppor­tu­ni­ties abound to social­ize and get out of the room.

Dial-A-Ride is offered for any­one 65 and old­er who can call ahead to be picked up to be dri­ven to dif­fer­ent appoint­ments. Dur­ing the hol­i­days, tables are set up and dec­o­rat­ed to make res­i­dents feel like they’re at home. 

A com­mon area gives res­i­dents time to work on puz­zles or just chat. A near­by TV room fea­tures a week­ly Fri­day night movie and has “Jeop­ardy” and “Wheel of For­tune” watch par­ties dur­ing the week. Peo­ple from the Willi­man­tic Library show up twice a month so res­i­dents can bor­row books.  

Just a mile away, res­i­dents at St. Joseph Liv­ing Cen­ter in Wind­ham are more reliant on the staff. The aver­age age of the center’s 110 res­i­dents is 85–88 years old, and the lev­el of inde­pen­dence is low­er than that of many oth­er retire­ment homes. 

Still, the cen­ter puts out an activ­i­ty cal­en­dar that gets post­ed on every resident’s door. 

Tracey Meg­son with a res­i­dent at St. Joseph Liv­ing Cen­ter in Wind­ham. Pho­to cour­tesy of Tracey Meg­son

Morn­ing and after­noon activ­i­ties are offered every day, and musi­cians, car­i­ca­tures artists and pet ther­a­pists vis­it to keep res­i­dents enter­tained.  

“You’re able to live out your life with some social­iza­tion, some med­ical sup­port, some over­all sup­port of your well-being,” the activ­i­ties direc­tor at St. Joseph Liv­ing Cen­ter, Tracey Meg­son, said. “Social­ly, you’re not iso­lat­ed, we give you a sense of pur­pose.” 

The goal is to get res­i­dents to inter­act with each oth­er or become engaged in activ­i­ties to com­bat any feel­ings of lone­li­ness. 

Such efforts at social inter­ac­tion appear to have made a dif­fer­ence, as researchers have not­ed a sharp decline in feel­ings of iso­la­tion in recent years. Accord­ing to a poll from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Michi­gan, the feel­ings of social iso­la­tion among adults ages 50–80 have decreased from 56 per­cent in mid-2020 to 34 per­cent in Jan­u­ary 2023. 

All activ­i­ties are option­al, but Bakke urges her res­i­dents to make an effort. Still, some res­i­dents don’t need a social life inside retire­ment homes.

Gun­nel Sten­berg, an 80-year-old who com­pletes more in a day than many col­lege stu­dents, still does the book­keep­ing at a print­ing busi­ness that her daugh­ter now runs. She still has her own car and dri­ves; she gets to see her daugh­ter every time she goes into the store.  

She is also part of what she describes as a “lions club,” where she meets her friends at a sports bar and they drink and do oth­er activ­i­ties togeth­er.

“I do a lot of things out­side of here, but I get along great with the staff. They are great, and they are the ones that I’m depen­dent on,” Sten­berg said. 

Pri­or to mov­ing into the Card Home, Sten­berg lived by her­self not far from her cur­rent address. When her last dog died, she want­ed to keep liv­ing by her­self but knew it was time to move on. She knew about the Card Home because when she was work­ing in her print shop, the for­mer own­er ordered some ads print­ed for the retire­ment home.  Sten­berg made the move in 2019, so dur­ing the pan­dem­ic she didn’t have to go out and risk get­ting ill. When the COVID vac­cine became avail­able, she was imme­di­ate­ly pro­vid­ed one as part of the $3,071 rent.

“Thank God I lived here dur­ing the pan­dem­ic,” she said.  

Sten­berg has no plans to leave the retire­ment home. She says it’s a relief for both her­self and her fam­i­ly that she is in a place where there is always staff around to check on her. Her fam­i­ly will nev­er have to wor­ry about her car­ry­ing gro­ceries from the store or no one being there if she falls down the stairs.  

Gun­nel Sten­berg made the move to the Card Home for the Aged in 2019. Pho­to by Joshua Zatul­skis

But social­iz­ing isn’t easy for every­one, and some peo­ple have a hard­er time adjust­ing to a new place or leav­ing their fam­i­ly.  

Accord­ing to a study by the Nation­al Acad­e­mies of Sci­ences, Engi­neer­ing, and Med­i­cine, old­er adults are at increased risk for social iso­la­tion and lone­li­ness because they are more like­ly to face things such as liv­ing alone, the loss of fam­i­ly or friends, chron­ic ill­ness and sen­so­ry impair­ments. Social iso­la­tion and lone­li­ness may be chron­ic or occur in episodes, but that depends on an individual’s cir­cum­stances. 

Meg­son at the St. Joseph Liv­ing Cen­ter says she believes one of the bar­ri­ers to get­ting res­i­dents involved is that it’s dif­fi­cult to cater to the needs of all res­i­dents at the same time. 

“Some­times a bar­ri­er is the per­son them­selves com­ing to a point of real­iz­ing they are lim­it­ed,” she said. “Their mind is still with us, but their body is lim­it­ed. We do have peo­ple who feel a lit­tle bit hope­less, they strug­gle giv­ing up their inde­pen­dence.”