Expanding the power of friendship and connections for older adults

Mounting research about the connection between age-related loneliness, isolation and dementia naturally leads to sad stories about depressed older folks slowly losing their grip on reality.

Staffers at Friends & Co (formerly Little Brothers Friends of the Elderly), a St. Paul-based nonprofit focused on fostering meaningful connections for older adults, have an intimate understanding of those troubling connections — but they’ve chosen to come at the issue from a more optimistic perspective.

“We always focus on the beauty of friendship, the magic of friend connections,” said Dennis Glock, Friends & Co marketing director.” In his nonprofit’s interactions with members, he said, “We emphasize the mental health benefits of friendships, how it increases this, does more of that. We choose to take a positive spin.” That positive spin, Glock says with a laugh, just may be the secret to his more than 50-year-old organization’s ongoing success: “You draw more flies with sugar than with glue.”

The organization’s name also reflects its focus on accentuating the positive. “The old name was such a barrier for us,” Glock said. Though the international Little Brothers organization elected to stay with the original name, the Minnesota chapter was granted permission to spin off and choose a name that better reflected their approach.

Glock said the group went through a “lengthy” rebranding process, eventually winding up with the name Friends & Co. It’s important to note, Glock said, that the Co part of the name has no period at the end: “The Co doesn’t stand for company. It stands for so many co-words that represent what we do, like connection, community, companionship.”

While the nonprofit has always focused on the power of friendship connection for older adults, in more recent decades it has expanded its reach to specific constituencies, including the LGBTQ+ community, creating programs focused on building friendships among gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender older adults, including Let’s Do Lunch, Let’s Do Coffee and Coffee Talk.

Friends & Co receives support from Trellis, a Twin Cities-based nonprofit that assists individuals in aging well and developing the capacity of communities to care for an aging population. Maren Levad, Trellis’ Dementia Friendly Initiatives program manager, said Friends & Co has established itself as a key player in the region’s LGBTQ+ community.

“They are a really robust community organization in the metro area,” Levad said. Let’s Do Lunch, a twice-monthly group that meets for food and community, is, she explained, “the Twin Cities’ biggest LGBTQ+ elders program. It is a fun group. They have a really, really good time.”

The idea behind Let’s Do Lunch and other Friends & Co programs is to build supportive community connections for older adults at a time when many of their friendships and other personal relationships have dwindled, leaving them in greater need for companionship, Levad said. Without opportunities to get out and see friends, many aging adults can feel isolated and alone. This loneliness can lead to feelings of depression, which can eventually lead to memory loss and dementia.

Recently, Friends & Co. was awarded a mini grant from Trellis, Levad said, to create an educational video about aging, friendship and mental health for the LGBTQ+ community. Trellis also provided Friends & Co staff with training through the nonprofit’s Dementia Friendly Community Initiatives program. “We met with them and trained them in social isolation and loneliness best practices,” Levad said. “It was a way to further expand their knowledge.”

Problem identified, solutions offered

Trellis staff often go into the community to provide presentations on issues related to aging and mental health for professional organizations, businesses and community groups. The organization also creates and publishes literature aimed at building understanding and identifying support programs for people with dementia and memory loss, including a comprehensive “topic guide” that presents resources and strategies for people who want to know more about the connections between social isolation and dementia.

In their presentations, Levad said, Trellis staff talk about research that looks into the causes and potential prevention of dementia.

“There is relatively newish research that is coming out that is saying that social isolation is a preventative risk factor for cognitive impairment including dementia,” she said. While people are always looking for ways to prevent dementia, there is no proven medical cure. Still, Levad said, the research-backed connection between unaddressed loneliness, social isolation and cognitive impairment shows that when an older adult builds and maintains social connections through friendship, “this decline can be reversed and addressed. Building and maintaining social connections can be helpful in retaining cognitive function.” 

The idea of making new friends can be stressful at any age. Glock said he and his colleagues at Friends & Co have tried to reduce the stress for their participants by making it as easy as possible to get involved in their programs.

“By design, some of our services that reduce loneliness and isolation for older adults are low- barrier-to-entry,” Glock said.  “Not everybody is comfortable saying, ‘I identify as lonely or isolated.’ Because of that, we wanted to make it incredibly easy to get involved. You don’t have to sign up or commit to anything. You just have to give us a try, see what you think.”

The Visiting Companions program has always been at the heart of Friends & Co’s offerings. Participants, often referred by medical professionals or loved ones, sign up for regular in-person visits with a trained volunteer. To make a match, Glock said, “We talk to [potential participants], they tell us a little bit about themselves and we match them with a volunteer. After that match is made, the participant basically determines their own level of social engagement. They decide if they want to visit three times a month, four times a month — whatever works for them.”

During the height of the Covid pandemic, the Visiting Companions program shifted to offer a contact-free option called Phone Companions so participants and volunteers could continue to keep their connections strong during lockdown. “We realized that one-to-one visiting wasn’t going to happen at that time,” Glock said. “So we developed this service.” Now, post Covid, the program is still going strong, he said: “People still like it. It’s actually now our second-most popular program.”

Another popular Friends & Co offering is Coffee Talk, a drop-in chat line that is open from 8 a.m. to 12 p.m. Monday-Friday. “We have 3-4 volunteers a shift that are trained to answer the phone,” Glock said. “People can dial the number and talk about what’s on their mind. We don’t ask them any more than their first name.”

When volunteers begin to notice that a particular caller keeps returning for more Coffee Talk chats, Glock said volunteers are trained to try a “softer sell,” letting the caller know about other Friends & Co programming that they might be interested in. “We’ll say, ‘Did you know we have these other services?’ We’re trying to get them comfortable with trying some of our other free programs. We don’t want people to miss out on everything we have to offer.”

The lunch bunch

Let’s Do Lunch was launched 15 years ago with a goal of bringing LGBTQ+ older adults together in a fun and un-intimidating way, Glock said. “We invited people to come together for a free lunch and to socialize.” The program quickly grew. Today, some 65 members meet twice a month at a select spot in Minneapolis. “It’s a lot of fun,” Levad said of the lunches. “It’s a really good time.”

The lunches feel like much more than just a good time, Glock said. “People equate programs like ours with better quality of life. They feel happier, more connected to the community.” Plus, he said, the group has sprouted tendrils of connection for many participants, helping to expand friendship networks.

“We’ve had subgroups of Let’s Do Lunch people form friendships,” Glock said. “They are truly socially connected with each other. They are doing things outside of Let’s Do Lunch, like meeting for coffee or going for walks. They are creating these ad-hoc support groups for themselves.”

Glock said he particularly likes the way Friends & Co encourages participants to make the programs work for them. For years, Let’s Do Lunch meetings featured speakers who talked about topics of interest to participants, like fraud protection, consumer advocacy or wills. Then staff surveyed the group to see if they wanted to make changes. Participants, Glock explained, “said they loved the educational programming, but some said they’d prefer something lighter. So we piloted another program called ‘Let’s Do Coffee.’ It’s a group that meets at The Pillars of Prospect Park for coffee and idle chit chat.”

Another participant-fueled change to the Let’s Do Lunch format includes an opportunity for participants to share personal stories of life in the LGBTQ+ community. “We had this one gentleman who was on the board of directors of a school in St. Paul and got outed in the early ‘80s,” Glock said. “He talked about his journey. Everybody was like, ‘I love hearing what he has to say. It is so great.’ So we just kept on going.”

This new option has been named “Let’s Do Sharing.” Interested participants can now sign up to share their personal stories with their lunch buddies. “It’s been super-popular,” Glock said. “It is so interesting to hear people’s stories. It’s another great way to build community.”

The success of programs like Let’s Do Lunch have drawn the attention of other groups. Glock said that after 50 years of focusing their services in the  greater Twin Cities metro area, Friends & Co is now expanding around the state and into western Wisconsin. The nonprofit is also developing subgroups focused on underserved populations, including older LGBTQ+ adults in BIPOC communities.

This success has led to invitations for Friends & Co staff to speak to other nonprofits about how to best reach LGBTQ older adults, Glock said. “We get a lot of requests. They say, ‘You do this LGBTQ+ thing so well. Can you partner with us? We don’t know how to do this.’”

Glock said he and his colleagues relish the opportunity for further connection-building. It speaks to their mission, he said, and they’re eager to bring people together to make getting older feel a little easier. 

“We know how to reach our community,” he said. “It’s important, because we know that building stronger friendships can help older adults stay healthier and happier longer. Plus we just know how to make it fun.”

Andy Steiner

Andy Steiner is a Twin Cities-based writer and editor. Before becoming a full-time freelancer, she worked as senior editor at Utne Reader and editor of the Minnesota Women’s Press. Email her at asteiner@minnpost.com.

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