Alamo Today

Reassurance Phone Friends
by Fran Miller
Eighty-year old Bonita always looked forward to her daily 8:00am phone call from her Reassurance Phone Friend volunteer. But the morning after she had fallen in her backyard, where she lain overnight with a broken hip, her Phone Friend became a phone savior.

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Senior Helpline Services is a nonprofit, charitable human services agency that was founded (as Contact Care Center) in 1972. Today, we specialize in communicating with and transporting essentially homebound seniors in Contra Costa County who are trying to age in place, rather than be institutionalized.

Reassurance Phone Friends 

Our Reassurance Phone Friends program started on June 1, 1998. This program matches a senior with a phone friend volunteer who will keep the promise to call daily or less frequently as requested. Our Reassurance phone friends place 5-10 minute calls from their homes, offices, or cell phones at a mutually agreed upon time. In 2008, phone friends made over 18,000 calls to clients age 60 to 100!

These phone calls:

• let the client know that someone cares,
• offer a few minutes of friendly conversation and compassionate listening,
• allow us to make sure the client is in reasonably good health, and
• give us an opportunity to identify the need for information, referrals,
  and advocacy.

Staff members provide a "safety net" by following up on unanswered calls to see if the client needs immediate help due to a fall, sudden illness, or other reason. 

In addition to phone calls, clients receive handwritten cards on a regular basis, including holidays, birthdays, during illness, for encouragement and in sympathy.

Rides For Seniors 

On September 1, 2005, Senior Helpline Services began offering to our ambulatory Reassurance Phone Friends program clients & senior phone friend volunteers, free one-on-one, door-through-door rides provided by volunteer drivers. These rides are primarily for the purpose of obtaining medical care, groceries, and other basic necessities. Training for volunteer drivers includes learning & practicing safety techniques.

The Rides for Seniors program was added to fill a gap in services for seniors who no longer drive & cannot access other forms of transportation. Unless they are able to use public transportation, paratransit, vans, or cabs that provide only curb-to-curb service, seniors often have difficulty in accessing medical care and obtaining basic necessities. In our society, mobility = independence, so without a safe and available alternative to driving, the end result for seniors is often institutionalization or even premature death.

In order to ensure the safety of our Rides for Seniors clients, these clients must also participate in the Reassurance Phone Friends program.