Aging Gracefully

Pat Stewart remembers the day one of her clients walked into the Buena Park Senior Day Care Center with his son to sign up. The elderly man had been hanging around the senior center, as many seniors do, over the last few days but had been wandering through the halls aimlessly. Senior center staff had alerted his son and suggested that he enroll his father in the center’s day-care program.

“I just thought to myself at the time, ‘How could we get the word out about our program,’ ” Stewart said. “It makes you think about how many older people are out there who need help and just are not getting it.”

Stewart is manager of the day-care program sponsored by the Feedback Foundation of Orange County. Since 1983 the program has provided daytime supervision of people ages 60 and older with special needs while giving seniors an environment where they can interact, bond and try to ward off the effects of aging. Stewart said this particular program is unique because it does this without hindering the senior’s independence.

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From 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday, Stewart and her two assistants supervise a variety of social and physical activities for seniors, each designed to keep them from premature placement in convalescent and nursing facilities.

Arts and crafts, current events and trivia games allow seniors to interact in a social setting, which the staff members feel helps them fight senility.

“What we try to do is maintain their level of orientation for as long as possible,” Stewart said. “Without physical and emotional contact with others, the probability of older people losing contact with reality is greater.”

Stewart has been working with senior citizens since she was a teenager and said the reward she and her staff receive comes from watching once-isolated seniors open up to one another.

Programs like the one at Buena Park Senior Center are needed because all too often seniors and their children are in denial of their condition and if not checked in time may lead to extreme medical care, she said.

“There’s nothing like looking into the faces of these people and finding out what they’ve done years ago,” Stewart said. “Working with them makes me realize that someday I’ll be where they are. I just hope someone will take interest in me the way we take interest in these folks.”

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Andre Briscoe can be reached at (714) 966-5848.