A therapeutic program in Eleanor Hall is proving that you are never too old, or too young, to make new friends.
Students in Eleanor Hall’s Grade 2 class have been meeting with a group of five seniors every Wednesday since the start of the school year.
The regular meetings are part of a larger “Inter-generational” program with the Westlock Continuing Care Centre.
Recreation therapist Dan Basisty explained that he arranges for a group of seniors to come out to meet with the class for a half hour where they chat, play board games and socialize.
For many of the seniors, the “senior buddy day” is a great chance to get out and keep active.
“I love it, it gets me out into the community,” said Matt Steinbring, who has been participating in the program for four years. “It helps me to get to know kids, see how things are different between the way I grew up and they way they grew up. It makes my week go by a lot faster.”
“This is a recreation therapy program; it’s something a lot of nursing homes do,” said Basisty. “The crux of it is to get seniors interacting with children and vise-versa — having children interact with seniors to learn about the past. It’s also an excellent educational opportunity for our seniors to see what’s going on today with youth — what school is like, what kids do for fun and chores.”
While in some jurisdictions the students are taken to the senior’s care home, Basisty said he prefers to bring the seniors to the kids.
“They want to see what a modern school is like. They want to get out, they want to see the changes and technology,” Basisty added.
The students’ Grade 2 teacher Jesslyn Weir noted she decided to bring in the program after seeing its success in other jurisdictions.
“I’ve known Dan for a while and I saw this program in a couple of other schools,” said Weir. “So I contacted him. It was successful so we just continued doing it.”
Basisty has been running the program for about eight years. This is the second year he was worked with Weir.
“It’s relationship building between generations,” he said. “They’re learning about each other. For a lot of the students, it’s really nice to be engaging with people who could be their grandparent or even their great grandparent’s age. (They’re) learning about things like what school is like nowadays compared to what it used to be like; it’s sort of a history lesson.”
He added the program had been a huge success for the many years he has been running it and that the relationships that are built during the short half-hour meets can last lifetimes.
“I’ve been in this community for 16 years,” he said. “What’s really neat to see is you see the children at this age with these intergenerational programs, then as they get older they’ll sometimes see us doing a parade or an event and they’ll come running up because they remember their senior buddy.
“Also, we even have some students who want to volunteer as they get older,” he added. “They’ll come volunteer in our facility, they remember the seniors and the seniors remember them.”
As each class visit wraps up, children escort their guests back to the handi-bus waiting for the seniors.
“It’s been awesome, kids look forward to it every week,” Weir said.
“It’s been really great.”
