CAMARILLO : Program Joins Hands Across the Generations

Four-year-old Chase Rand nestled onto the lap of Maureen Wheeler, his head resting on her chest, his legs straddling the front of her wheelchair.

Wheeler, 87, wrapped her arms around the boy’s waist.

“He’s so special,” she said.

Chase and Wheeler did not meet until 2 1/2 months ago.

But differences in age, experience and family background melt away when the two visit, said Wheeler’s daughter, Maureen Alvarez, as she watched them cuddle Thursday at a Camarillo day-care center that Chase attends.

“The only word for it is love ,” Alvarez said. “There’s no age gap with love.”

Chase is one of 12 children at the Children’s Place day-care center paired with wheelchair-bound elderly who live at the extended-care unit of St. John’s Pleasant Valley Hospital.

Under a program designed to bring nursing-home residents together with day-care children, the 4- and 5-year-olds began making weekly visits to hospital residents 11 weeks ago.

Thursday was the first time that the seniors went to the day-care center, which sits just across the street from the hospital.

“This is a real treat to come over here,” Wheeler said. “I often look out the window and watch them.”

Bernadette Limon, 31, the Cal State Northridge graduate student who designed the program, said she wanted to break down the social barriers that often separate the generations.

Many elderly people at nursing homes do not see their grandchildren often, Limon said, and many children barely know their grandparents.

Although some churches or nonprofit groups sponsor programs that take groups of children to visit nursing homes on Christmas, Easter or other holidays, “a lot of times kids come in and perform and then they leave,” she said.

Limon’s program is different. The children and elderly work together on projects ranging from puppet shows to playing color bingo.

On Thursday, the children took their visitors on a tour of the play lot and grounds at Trinity Presbyterian Church, where the day-care center is located.

In the play lot, some children who are not participating in the hospital program stared at the men and women in wheelchairs next to the sandbox.

One interested bystander was 7-year-old Shannon Kehoe. “It feels sort of weird,” she said. “I don’t know what it would feel like to be inside a wheelchair.”