A community keeps in touch with its elderly
Back when things started to get serious — which seems like a lifetime ago — town managers around the state began to ask their lieutenants to create work plans for municipal employees.
Although it was unthinkable at the time, discussions revolved around closures, and how people who work for towns might be re-purposed and kept working, if at a different job.
Beth Crowley, who is director of Cheshire Public Library, had been scanning listservs for librarians around the country. She thought some of her workers — who would no longer be needed at their actual jobs if the library closed – could reach out to town senior citizens, a demographic whose members might suffer most acutely during a quarantine.
About 18 percent of Cheshire’s 29,000 or so residents are older than 65. (Just over 17 percent of the state’s residents fall into that age group.) Employees at the town’s senior center have long made it a practice to call 300 housebound elders every week, but during the quarantine, they decided to reach out to the 2,000 people who’d paid a $10 annual membership to belong to the center, said Michelle Piccerillo, director of Cheshire human services.
To do that, they would need reinforcements.
This quarantine — necessary as it is — has been tough on a lot of people. The idea that death floats right outside your door is bad enough, and then there are the more mundane concerns of the chronically healthy – parents with school-aged children, teachers with school-aged children, and people who don’t have access to the internet at a time when we’ve all moved online. There’s social isolation, and then there’s being cut off completely.
That last group includes people who can’t afford the connection, and senior citizens who may not feel comfortable with FaceTime, Zoom, and other video communications.
A 2017 Pew Research Center study said that just 67 percent of adults age 65 and older say they are comfortable going online, From that same study, just a third said they use social media. And in times like these, that disconnect is a problem.
Loneliness is serious business among the elderly. A recent University of Michigan study said one in three seniors say they feel lonely. Chronic loneliness can lead to serious health issues, and can actually shorten a life.
So every week, some 2,000 Cheshire elderly can opt in for a phone call. Town employees — some of whom in normal times work for the library — have a script to follow, and they are good at connecting people to town services. The program uses ancient technology — a simple phone call — to check on seniors, and it keeps some town employees on the job during the shutdown.
This is just one more step in the evolution of libraries. As library book circulation drops everywhere — including on college campuses — libraries have shifted into becoming Third Places, those spots that are neither work nor home that allow us to mingle with people who aren’t family.
Libraries have positioned themselves as primary Third Places with events like craft nights, movie nights, programs and concerts — which makes library closures even more difficult for their patrons. It’s not just books, and it hasn’t been for years.
For Crowley, losing face-to-face connection with library patrons has been the scariest part of the crisis.
“We all feel that way: ‘When are we going to get back in there,’ and if we could just tell people when, it would feel less permanent,” she said. “We were in the end-planning stages of summer reading. We already had a lot of things planned. Are we going to be able to be there to do that?”
No one can answer that yet, even while Gov. Ned Lamont, Gov. Andrew Cuomo and other northeast leaders vow to work as a region to figure out when and how to reopen (and Connecticut has assembled some impressive bold-face names on its economic advisory group).
But when we come through this — and we will — Crowley knows precisely where libraries will fit in.
“Libraries are going to be more important than ever in helping people get back on their feet,” she said. That’s finding jobs, applying for assistance, and providing much-needed internet service.
“We see library use go up during recessions, and so while we may not be the frontline responders during this crisis, we will be a primary support after the fact,” she said. “We look forward to seeing everyone again.”