Phone line reduces senior loneliness

For older adults who find themselves isolated and feeling lonely, an eager voice to talk to is just a phone call away in Clackamas County, Ore. 

The Clackamas County Senior Loneliness Line provides a personal connection for older adults experiencing loneliness and isolation. The line provides a friendly person to talk, listen, give emotional support or even provide resources and referrals, counseling or suicide intervention. 

To establish the senior loneliness line, Clackamas County Older Adult Behavioral Specialist Kimberly Whitely said the county partnered with Lines for Life, a non-profit organization that has several different crisis lines including suicide, veteran and youth lines. 

The senior loneliness line launched in 2018 and is a confidential, free service funded by Clackamas County for any older adult who needs to talk with another person. The county spent nearly $12,000 for the Lines for Life call center and $61,000 on outreach, promotion and education. 

The majority of callers are between 65 and 74 years old. There is no time limit per call, but calls last about 20 minutes on average, according to Whitely. 

Staff members at Lines for Life answer calls from all different phone lines and are trained to handle a variety of phone calls and situations. When the senior loneliness line launched, volunteers completed additional training on issues specific to older adults and loneliness. County staff worked with Lines for Life to create a connection to its senior services so volunteers at the call center would be familiar with resources available to older individuals. 

Whitely explained how volunteers’ versatility in handling different types of phone calls benefits older adults because if someone who calls is identified as being in crisis, the volunteer is able to intervene. 

“The beauty of it is if someone is in crisis, that same person they’re talking to is also trained in that, so they don’t have to switch off to someone else,” she said. “There’s no sort of break in that conversation.” Since the line launched in May 2018, there have been nearly 4,700 calls through September 2019 with calls coming from 24 counties throughout Oregon. According to Whitely, out of all the lines Lines for Life has launched, the senior loneliness line has been the most successful. 

Loneliness has impacts on both physical and mental health when it comes to older adults and contributes to higher risk factors for dementia, Whitely said. Specifically in rural areas of the county, transportation issues contribute to social isolation for those who may have poor health.

“Just them being able to call in to give them that connection and although they may not physically be in someone’s presence, it’s at least that social connection they have,” she said. 

Many callers form relationships with the volunteers and ask when they are working their next shift to speak with them again. Others call in at the same time because they’ve built a relationship with the person on the other end of the phone. Volunteers at the Senior Loneliness Line will occasionally make calls out to individuals, although Whitely said most older adults like to control when they want to talk. 

Volunteers also offer to send postcards to callers after they speak with them on the phone. 

The concept for Clackamas County’s senior loneliness line started through the state of Oregon’s older adult behavioral health initiative that launched in 2015. The initiative focuses on complex case consultations, training and education and improving collaboration and coordination between agencies to make services more accessible for older adults. 

Whitely said through outreach efforts with this initiative, it became clear that members of the aged community shut down discussions around mental health or behavioral health. However, when they would talk in terms of loneliness, individuals were more likely to engage. 

Whitely attributed the success of the line to it being “low barrier” and promoted for anyone who may just need someone to listen. 

“It’s marketed as the senior loneliness line so not as a crisis line because there’s so much stigma still around mental health issues,” she said.