The year-long COVID-19 pandemic has led to prolonged isolation as well as missed telemedical appointments among many seniors. Now, at Saye Brooke Village in Old Saybrook, residents have a new computer station to help alleviate those issues.

Sue Consoli, the town’s social services coordinator and municipal agent for the elderly, came up with the idea after speaking with Town Nurse Tina Belmont, who had expressed concerns about clients at Saye Brooke Village, an affordable housing facility for the elderly, who had neither access to a computer nor the skills to use one.

Consoli considered various solutions.

“[I]f we tried to connect them individually, they would each need an Internet connection that we’d have to pay for,” she explained. “[T]hey’d all have to have a device, whether it was a smartphone or a tablet...And then they’d be on their own.

“[I]t was too much and too cumbersome and wouldn’t work, really,” she continued. “So I came up with this idea, because there’s WiFi already there” in the community room. “And then people are available to help.”

Consoli approached the town’s Public Health Nursing Board (PHNB) with her idea, wrote a proposal, and the PHNB ultimately awarded $2,000 to the project.

Once she had the funding, “I got it done as quickly as we could,” Consoli said. “I wish I thought of the idea last year, but you know, who knew how long this thing was going to last? And what was going to happen? But this is something that really is really needed for older folks.”

Consoli managed to purchase a computer, desk, printer, and privacy screen with a Monet water lily design, all of which has been set up in the community room at Saye Brooke Village East, to which residents of all the buildings have access.

It’s currently being used on a first-come, first-served basis with assistance available from Saye Brooke Village staff as well as Belmont, who is at the facility for three hours once a week. The building is open to residents 24 hours a day, according to Kathleen S. Koch, the Property Administrator.

The past year has been grueling for many seniors, partly due to the “lack of communication that they have with their families and their doctors or providers,” Belmont explained. “Most of them do not have their own computers. Keeping in contact with their family and friends and medical providers was quite a struggle.”

While many of the residents aren’t familiar with using a computer for telemedical sessions or visits with family members, “[i]f they have the opportunity for someone to sit down with them, it does improve their physical and [mental] wellbeing as well as their social lives. They can do shopping, manage their bills,” and other basic tasks.

One resident, Belmont said, “has her own computer and is able to get on Facetime to meet with her book club once a month. It prevents boredom and gives them someone to chat to. It really does improve their...memory and their thinking.”

Another resident told Belmont that she was recently talking on the phone with her grandson, who is four or five years old. During the conversation, her grandson told her, “Just Google it.”

She told him, “‘I don’t know how to Google it,’” according to Belmont. “She was looking forward to Google with some assistance and get back to her grandson and say, ‘I did Google it.’”

Belmont’s services are provided to the town via its contract with the Visiting Nurses Association of Southeastern Connecticut, an arrangement set up by the Saybrook’s Public Health Nursing Board (PHNB), according to PHNB Chair Diane Aldi DePaola. The PHNB is interested in looking for further opportunities to fund similar computer stations in other local facilities housing the elderly as well as those with disabilities, according to DePaola.