Program Provides Companionship for the Elderly : Aging: Caregiver volunteers spend time each week socializing with or helping seniors do chores or errands. Close friendships often result.

This is why Mary Lou and Bob Foulsham need Frank Whitney:

To hang a picture on the wall.

To fix the antique clock when it breaks down.

To show up every Thursday morning, like he says he will, to make the elderly couple laugh and be their friend in a world that can seem increasingly filled with worries.

“He’s our guardian angel,” says Mary Lou, 78, beaming at the man they met after they called Caregivers.

The Ventura-based, interfaith Caregivers matches elderly county residents with younger volunteers, on the theory that a little extra help and companionship can go a long way toward keeping many older people productive and independent.

“Our point is to provide a continuing match, with the goal . . . of keeping people out of nursing homes,” said Pat Meredith, Caregivers’ executive director. “Just to have someone to talk to on the telephone makes an enormous difference.”

An applicant must be at least 60 years old to receive a Caregiver. Caregivers themselves range from teen-agers to the healthy, mobile elderly. In fact, Meredith said, many volunteers are retired people with time to spare.

A Caregiver worker interviews prospective recipients and volunteers before they enter the program, learning as much as possible about each person in order to make the best match.

At the minimum, volunteers are expected to spend a few hours each week with elderly clients, doing anything from socializing to changing light bulbs to driving them to the doctor’s office. But Meredith said many matches work so well that the volunteers end up spending much more time than they had planned.

For Whitney and the Foulshams, the 6-month-old match came about because Bob Foulsham was lonely.

Eighty years old and suffering from Parkinson’s disease, a progressively debilitating neurological disorder, the retired engineer could not easily get out and make new friends. And because the couple moved West from Texas a few years ago to be closer to their daughter, they had to start a social network from scratch.

“I just asked God to send us the perfectly right person,” Mary Lou Foulsham recalled. “And Frank is absolutely perfect. He just walked into the door and we loved him instantly.”

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As for Whitney, 63, he had recently retired from heavy-duty mechanic work and was looking for ways to make himself useful. One of his friends is Carol Basralian, who coordinates volunteer services for Caregivers, and she persuaded him to get involved.

It turns out that Whitney and the Foulshams have a lot in common. They are all deeply involved in their respective churches. Both men share a love of mechanics--where Whitney once fixed heavy machinery, Bob Foulsham made a hobby out of restoring antique cars.

Best of all, Whitney laughs at Bob Foulsham’s jokes.

Mary Lou Foulsham, herself troubled by bad hips and rheumatoid arthritis, calls on Whitney frequently during the week to help them out with odd jobs around the house. “I’ve never used an agency, because Frank’s never said no,” she said.

But Thursdays “are our fun days,” she said.

Whitney introduced the couple to the pool at the YMCA, and they swim some mornings while he watches from the sidelines to make sure no one has an emergency. Other days, he takes them to a singing group at the local senior center or on outings to the movies.

Mary Lou can still drive, but between caring for her ailing husband, keeping house for the widowed daughter and two granddaughters they now live with, and watching after her own health, she welcomes the chance to relax.

“It takes just about all she has to keep things going,” Whitney said.

The same could be said of the Caregivers organization itself, which runs on a shoestring budget out of a cramped office on a Ventura hillside. A staff of two full-time and two part-time employees coordinate the matches of 250 volunteers and as many elderly recipients.

With recessionary times lingering, donations continue to drop. When Meredith, the executive director, started two years ago, the organization had an annual budget of $145,000. This year, the budget is $128,000.

Each cut in income, Caregiver officials say, means less outreach to the community. And less community outreach means Caregivers receives fewer donations.

“It’s a vicious cycle,” Meredith said. “And it’s very tough raising money. Services to the elderly are not a desirable activity. It’s not a sexy issue.”

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Mention the subject of money, in fact, and Meredith and Basralian knit their brows in frustration. They wonder why they have to stretch their staff and cut auxiliary services and pinch every penny when the work they do is so obviously valuable.

Just ask Viola Jensen.

Ninety-two years old “and counting all my blessings,” the Ventura resident’s week revolves around her Tuesday afternoon visits with Caregiver volunteer Joan Rollins, 70.

“She is just wonderful,” Jensen raves. “She is so good to me. Every single Tuesday she gives me two or three hours. Sometimes, she brings up ice cream from Thrifty, and she’ll dish it out. Oh, we like our ice cream and we like to gab!”

During the 18 months they have known each other, both women say, they have become the warmest of friends. Jensen also relies on Caregivers to supply her with other volunteers for essential errands when Rollins is busy. Last month, for example, Caregivers matched her with a volunteer who drove her to get her hearing checked.

“If I didn’t have Caregivers--oh golly sakes alive, I would be lost if I didn’t have their love and attention,” Jensen said.

“You know, I call up and I say, ‘Hello, this is Viola Jensen.’ And they say, ‘Oh, hello, Mrs. Jensen.’ They know who Viola Jensen is. And that makes me feel good.”