Fifty Years of Friendship Center

Friendship Center has never needed much of an excuse for a party.

There is Senior Prom, the Fourth of July celebration and, most recently, a full Fiesta week of music, dancing, art and performances. Then there was this summer’s Polo Soirée, where nearly 100 guests helped the organization surpass its $75,000 fundraising goal.

So when it came time to mark Friendship Center’s 50th anniversary, simply throwing another party would have been almost too easy. Instead, the organization decided to celebrate by doing what it has done since 1976. Bring people together, give families somewhere to turn and make life with dementia a little less isolating.

“We are an organization that celebrates everything. We’re always celebrating,” says Executive Director Kathryn Westland. Yet she saw the anniversary as an opportunity to create something that would last beyond the milestone itself.

That thinking will culminate September 26 and 27 with a weekend that looks both forward and back. Friendship Center will hold its first Dementia Care Conference on Saturday at The Leta Hotel, followed Sunday by a Family Reunion and Picnic at the Carousel House in Chase Palm Park.

The conference is particularly important to Westland. Education has repeatedly surfaced in caregiver and community surveys as something families want and need. Not simply information about dementia, but practical knowledge that reflects the realities of caring for someone day after day.

Westland knows that distinction personally. She has been a family caregiver and a professional one. Before becoming executive director, she spent four years doing direct care as Friendship Center’s program manager. Her graduate work in public health focused specifically on dementia care, and she spent 13 years living with her grandfather, who had vascular dementia.

There is plenty of information available about why certain behaviors occur or how a disease progresses. The harder question comes at 2 am when a loved one has fallen, weighs 50 pounds more than you and needs to get back up.

“What do I actually do?” Westland asks. “That doesn’t help me at 2 am. That doesn’t help me when I’m trying to get through a day of work.”

Friendship Center’s conference is intended to help close that gap. Speakers are coming from around the country with expertise spanning research, caregiver advocacy, journalism, psychology and health care. Westland has been particular about the lineup, seeking people at the top of their fields who can also translate their knowledge into something useful for families.

One speaker, for example, is a UCSF researcher whose work explores the genetic component of dementia, an area Westland says is frequently misunderstood. Rather than having families sort through search results and conflicting explanations, Friendship Center is bringing an expert directly to Santa Barbara.

“The quality of care that we provide is being mirrored in the quality of information that we want people to walk away with,” Westland says.

Her hoped-for takeaway can be reduced to one word. Confidence.

Confidence to know what to ask a doctor. Confidence to understand that there may be several options available. Confidence to handle some of those situations that become considerably harder when they arrive unexpectedly in the middle of the night.

The conference is also meant to grow. Friendship Center intends for this first gathering to become an ongoing educational resource, using feedback from this year to develop future programs.

That makes the 50th anniversary less a finish line than a starting point.

The following day pivots to the people who built those five decades.

The Family Reunion and Picnic will welcome current and former members, families, staff, volunteers and board members from across Friendship Center’s history. There will be activities for children and a memory wall where people can share photographs and stories.

Westland initially thought of it as an alumni picnic. “Family reunion,” however, better captures the relationships that develop at the center.

“We do become a family,” she says. “This is the most vulnerable time that someone will go through. It’s very isolating. It’s very frightening as a caregiver, and of course for the person experiencing dementia.”

Friendship Center becomes, in her words, the place where people come for “the biggest hug.”

Those relationships do not necessarily disappear when someone stops attending. Westland still encounters former caregivers around town. Sometimes all it takes is mentioning a funny comment their parent once made or recalling a small moment from years earlier to bring that person back into the conversation.

That is part of what she hopes happens at the reunion.

“We’re not asking anyone to dig up old pain,” Westland says. Instead, she wants people to have an opportunity to talk about the lives their loved ones lived and the lives they shared with others.

There should be plenty of people around who remember.

Westland’s predecessor served in her role for 38 years. One current program team member has been at Friendship Center for 34 years. A volunteer who comes in twice a week was involved in the center’s founding. That continuity is unusual, and it means the September picnic can span generations without losing the common experience connecting them.

“Fifty years of the exact same mission, exact same service population,” Westland says. “The need has not diminished. The need has continued to grow.”

That mission is easy to see in the smaller celebrations that fill Friendship Center’s calendar.

During Fiesta week, special activities took place each day, with local dance groups coming in for live performances. Friday brought a Fiesta Party where caregivers joined loved ones for lunch and a themed art activity.

These are not extracurricular flourishes around the edges of dementia care. At Friendship Center, they are part of the care.

Members have art to make, music to hear, people to talk with and parties to attend. They have friends.

That philosophy was visible during Senior Prom this spring, when members arrived with spouses, children, caregivers and friends for an afternoon of makeovers, corsages and dancing. It is present throughout the week in the center’s art, music, movement, games, and social programming.

And the community helps make it possible.

The Summer Polo Soirée offered a particularly “Montecito” version of that support. Nearly 100 people attended this year’s gathering at the Santa Barbara Polo & Racquet Club, and 30 were new to the Friendship Center community. Combined with its summer campaign, the event pushed fundraising beyond its $75,000 goal.

Those dollars ultimately make their way back to days like Fiesta and to the larger mission behind them. Friendship Center provides a place for older adults living with Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and other forms of dementia to remain engaged socially while giving family caregivers time to work, run errands, rest, or simply know that their loved one is somewhere safe and welcoming. Its sliding-scale system means an inability to pay does not prevent someone from receiving services.

For Westland, reaching 50 carries some emotion.

“Even just saying that made me want to cry,” she says. “I just love this place. Absolutely love this place.”

There is pride in honoring everyone who has been part of Friendship Center, she says, and also in affirming the dignity of the population it serves.

“We have never been just the bingo-and-bolt center,” Westland says. The anniversary, to her, is a chance to double down on “the respect and the dignity and the care and the attention” that people living with cognitive decline deserve.

Fifty years offers plenty of history to celebrate. Friendship Center is making room for that history at the picnic table, on the memory wall and in the stories of families returning after years or even decades away.

Then, true to form, it is getting back to work.

There is a conference to launch, families to educate, caregivers to support, and a growing community need to meet. There will also undoubtedly be another reason to turn up the music, clear some space for dancing and have a party.

After all, Friendship Center has had 50 years of practice.