Background Information on Suzsanne Singer
and
Senior Connections
Origins
Suzsanne Singer was born in 1924 in Vienna, Austria, where she lived under Nazi occupation. Despite being the child of a Jewish father and crippled from tuberculosis, she managed to survive. After the war, she earned doctorate degrees in psychology and philology from the University of Vienna.
Suzsanne came to the United States in 1946. She created The Singer Institute in 1970 and devoted herself to helping severely disturbed young people. She and her staff created a unique home environment that was amazingly bright, cheerful, and inviting. Even more remarkable was the youngsters’ response. Suzsanne had an uncanny ability to firmly yet lovingly guide even the most troubled children toward constructive behavior. Despite operating with meager means, they always provided sustenance, love, hope, and joy.
While continuing to help a limited number of adolescents, in 1999 Suzsanne shifted from the extreme daily demands of serving troubled youth. Going to the other end of the age spectrum, she created Senior Connections (formerly called Community Connections), a program that trains “young seniors” to provide volunteer companionship for nursing home residents who receive few, if any, outside visitors. To ensure quality, she collaborated with the St. Louis University Department of Gero-Psychiatry in designing the volunteer training and ongoing volunteer support.
In 2000, Suzsanne suffered a stroke, but that did not stop her work. Despite confinement to a wheel chair, she has kept Senior Connections thriving. As always, she and her staff are approaching the challenge with enthusiasm and compassion.
Achievements
During the 35 years that Suzsanne worked with emotionally disturbed youth, The Singer Institute served approximately 200 youngsters. Based on a study conducted by St. Louis University, approximately 67% eventually became socially functional adults who were able to move on and lead happy, productive lives.
Beyond stabilizing the lives of the residents themselves, the program also helped desperate families find peace, joy, and hope in the recovery of their loved ones. Society is now benefiting from their contributions instead of needing to provide the institutionalized support that the children otherwise would have required.
Senior Connections offers even greater promise in terms of numbers. Since 2000, approximately 150 isolated nursing home residents in the St. Louis area have been served by more than 80 trained relational volunteers. Aside from benefiting the residents and their companions, families also benefit from seeing elderly loved ones enjoying happier, more positive lives. Additionally, the overall climate is enhanced in nursing homes through the Senior Connections program.
In recognition of Suzsanne’s work and character, the Ethical Society of St. Louis recognized her in 2005 with their most prestigious honor – the Ethical Humanist of the Year Award.
Special Approaches
Suzsanne brings a brilliant intellect, analytical and psychiatric training, along with relentless persistence to her years of experience working with lonely people, often cast away by others. She has special sensitivity to the effects of institutionalization, and she is often years ahead of others in her field in search of effective, loving solutions. In the youth program, she developed a unique model of treatment based on an extended family/therapeutic community setting.
An adaptation of her treatment strategies for adolescents was done for the Senior Connections volunteer training based on her four primary design points: Acceptability, Adaptability, Dependability, and Availability.
In her early writings for Senior Connections, Suzsanne stated:
Human beings who must survive on the emotional food of
institutional relationships, which are necessarily based primarily
on rules and regulations, unavoidably experience a severe
sense of abandonment and deprivation, and consequently
hopelessness. In any such institution, there is always the
potential for dehumanization, especially in the case of agencies
limited in resources and struggling to remain economically viable.
She insists that only nurturing, healing and protective personal relationships can stimulate a glimmer of hope and bring about some rejuvenation in people living under such difficult circumstances. A mutually beneficial volunteer relationship also emerges from the program.
In another excerpt from her writings, she says “Although some attempts are made to alleviate the terrible isolation and hopelessness, the problems that have emerged as our country has shifted from extended to nuclear families are relatively new. In terms of remedies,” she concludes, “the surface has not even been scratched.”
Vision for the Future
Suzsanne’s ultimate vision for Senior Connections is two-fold:
- Provide caring companionship for all long term care residents in the St. Louis region who receive few or no visitors from outside the facility where they live;
- Bring about a social movement by promoting her model nationwide for enriching the lives of long term care residents and the younger seniors who volunteer their time for companionship
To achieve the first goal, the organization is focused on recruiting approximately 2,000 “young independent seniors” as relational volunteers. To achieve the second goal, Suzsanne and the Institute are forming alliances with organizations in other communities nationwide that serve the elderly and are seeking ways to meet the relationship needs of isolated elderly in long term care facilities.
The Singer Institute
943 Warder Avenue, University City, MO 63130 314-727-9202