In Winston-Salem, youthful guides help navigate the memory loss journeys of their elders

One in five North Carolinians is 65 years of age or older, and the number of seniors living in the Tar Heel State is projected to grow by more than 50% over the next two decades. How to best care for older adults — particularly those with significant memory loss — is an ongoing challenge.

Since opening its doors in November, the Intergenerational Center for Arts and Wellness in Winston-Salem, has quickly begun filling in the caregiving gap. Aided by a team of local nonprofits, the center serves up to 1,000 seniors living with dementia each month, while fostering meaningful connections between the young and the young at heart.

In a long, sun-filled room with colorful walls in baby blue and yellow, music is playing. The happy participants — roughly 30 of them in all sitting side-by-side in a large circle — clap along enthusiastically, many with broad smiles on their faces.  

Most of these revelers are older adults living with Alzheimer’s disease or related forms of dementia. Today, during the Kindermusik Bridges program, they’re being entertained by tiny toddlers who pass out instruments for the seniors, and stay for a quick high five, or an affectionate pat on the head.

One of those doling out the friendly greetings is Thomas. Senior Services withholds the last names of participants like him who are living with dementia. The self-described die-hard Yankees fan comes to the Elizabeth and Tab Williams Adult Day Center every day. He’s made lots of friends here and says being around youngsters is special.

"For them to come to me and just give me whatever they are, I just love it," he says. "You just can’t express it. They’ve got their parents. I don’t have parents so, have the children here for a while and it makes me like a child again."

Sitting nearby is Alberta. The Durham native agrees. She thinks back on the little boy who moments ago seemed determined to shake her hand.

"I enjoy the children," she says. "And the boy come up with his little hand and I said, 'I don’t know where you’re going.' He was real sweet [laughs]."

Senior Services President and CEO Lee Covington says interactions like these are by design.

"Isolation is a major issue for older adults, and unfortunately that was made much more challenging during COVID, when we were all forced into isolation," says Covington. "And older adults have had a tougher time kind of recovering from that."

Covington believes that the intentional focus of bringing various ages together is a major part of what makes this Center so unique.

"The things that are happening with that intergenerational engagement every day is rebuilding those connections across communities, across groups, across individuals," he says. "I mean we’ve seen magic happen with — for instance — a two-year-old and an eighty-two-year-old who had never met, and within 10 minutes the connection between them and the bond that formed was just magical."

Interactions like these are facilitated by nearly two dozen local partners including Authoring Action, a literary and performance arts organization for teens. Winston-Salem State University has a fully equipped on-site clinic where physical therapy students get hands-on experience working with the seniors. And Sawtooth School for Visual Art occupies another dedicated space where teachers provide instruction on clay sculpture, weaving, painting and more.

Gently steering the participants along the way are caregivers like Assistant Program Coordinator Sarah Romanik. She says her guiding principle is meeting people where they are and treating them the way she would want to be treated.   

"The best part I think is watching people have joy and be successful every day," says Romanik. "And maybe engage a part of their brain that doesn’t happen all the time. People that aren’t verbal, watching them sing and reach back in their memory and do something that they haven’t done for a while is just amazing."

For the family members who’ve become caregivers for their loved ones with significant memory loss, being able to provide them access to that level of engagement and the added quality of life it brings can be transformative.

Winston-Salem native Constance Johnson was a budget officer in Washington, D.C. before moving back to her hometown. Today she's a full time caregiver for her husband Fred.  She says the work is sometimes difficult, but she’s motivated by the love they continue to share and the commitment she made.

"My husband loves it here," says Johnson. "He doesn’t come home and tell me stories, but the staff tells me stories when I come to pick him up. And they’ll say, ‘Well, Fred had a great time today. He won playing checkers,’ or ‘He won playing Bingo,’ or ‘He’s great at math. He was answering all these questions about math.’ So that gives me a lot of encouragement and I know that he enjoys it here because he’s participating."

Running the musical Bingo tables are local middle school students. And further engaging with the seniors during arts and crafts, and other activities are elementary students like 11-year-old Henry Clegg who attends Summit School in Winston-Salem.

He says the enjoyment he gets from the one-on-one encounters he has with older people at the center goes both ways.

"Seeing them smile makes me happy," Clegg says. "It’s really nice to see them be happy and not just be like lonely. And especially it’s fun to listen to their stories and all the stuff they have to say about their lives, because lots of them are very interesting and they’ve done lots of cool things."

Clegg adds that he enjoys helping out painting and serving lunches with the younger kids here, and also the wide age range of folks he encounters, from 4 to 94.

One of the people he often seeks out is Morris, who is always glad to see Henry Clegg.

Morris is a retired truck driver with many stories to tell, and a willing storytelling partner in Clegg. The two have become fast friends.

"He is a nice young man," he says. "He’s someone you can talk to. And he listens. That’s the key. And as long as you listen, you’re going to be alright, definitely ... not that I know everything. Don’t get me wrong here [laughs]."

For newcomers to this place, lighthearted conversations like these can be a little disorienting; the perception of what an adult day center should be is turned slightly on its head. On any given day the halls echo with the laughter of preschoolers, and middle schoolers calling out Bingo clues.

But the numbers associated with Alzheimer’s disease are sobering. In North Carolina alone it affects nearly a quarter-million adults, and since 2016 has claimed more than 4,000 lives each year.

Sara Romanik says it’s a reality she faces every day.

"Seeing that decline is hard and very ... like they’re family," she says. "They become family here. And they will tell you that with each other that we are a family here. And when someone passes away it’s hard to explain to everybody what’s happened because they don’t understand all the time. So, that’s hard. But mostly it’s fun and I get paid to dance and sing and play games and learn and all sorts of great stuff with people that I enjoy."