The Elder Dignity Project
The Elder Dignity Project brings communication tools, visits, and advocacy to older adults in California’s nursing homes — and equips the families who love them.
More than 400,000 Californians live in licensed long-term care facilities. The people who work inside those buildings are, overwhelmingly, doing difficult work inside stretched systems. The residents they care for, however, are increasingly alone. Family members visit less. Friends die or move. Strokes, dementia, and hearing loss make communication harder. The result is a population of older adults who are cared for physically but rarely truly seen.
Research has been consistent for twenty years: loneliness in older adults carries mortality risk comparable to smoking fifteen cigarettes a day. In long-term care populations, the majority of residents report moderate to severe loneliness. A third show clinically significant depressive symptoms. Antipsychotic medications are prescribed, often to manage behaviors that a person with better communication, more connection, or simply more attention would not be exhibiting in the first place.
This is not a story about bad facilities. It is a story about an entire system in which quiet company, legible communication, and small daily acts of being remembered have no line item in anyone’s budget. The Elder Dignity Project exists to fill that gap.
Three ways we work to restore dignity, presence, and voice to older adults.
Free communication boards for residents with aphasia or dementia. A comprehensive guide for families navigating nursing home visits, care plan meetings, and advocacy. A pocket-sized guide to resident rights. All of it free, downloadable, and ready to use on your next visit.
Explore our toolsBirthday packages mailed to residents. Phone Friend calls between volunteers and residents who want company. Letters from schoolchildren and community groups. Small acts, delivered reliably, that remind a person they are still here and still remembered.
See our programsWe partner with skilled nursing facilities on programs that improve both resident wellbeing and the quality measures those facilities are accountable for — including depressive symptoms, antipsychotic medication use, and family satisfaction. We work with facility leadership, not against them.
Partner with usA Note from Our Founder
I have spent my career in rooms most people never enter — as a combat medic, as an emergency responder, as a nurse, and now as a Director of Staff Development in a California skilled nursing facility. What I have seen inside long-term care does not match how we say we treat our elders. The Elder Dignity Project is my attempt to change what I can change, starting with the residents and families in front of me, starting today.
Fifteen dollars mails a birthday package to a resident who might otherwise have no one mark the day. Twenty-five dollars a month as a Founder Circle member builds the sustaining base that makes every other program possible. Every gift is tax-deductible.
Monthly updates on our work — who we reached, what we learned, what’s coming next. No sales pitches. Unsubscribe any time.
