Tuesday mornings are special for Tom Piezzo.
He gathers his stack of books and heads to the memory care unit at Epsom Health Care Center, where a small group of residents awaits.
Piezzo, director of the Epsom Public Library, spends the next half hour reading books to individuals experiencing memory loss as part of an initiative piloted by the State Library through the organization Reading2Connect.
“From the library’s perspective, [it’s] an underserved population that really has no access or options for library programming, and we’re minimal in terms of traditional library services, so this is a way to address that deficiency,” Piezzo said.
Reading2Connect centers around connecting people with memory loss to reading material designed to stimulate their minds. The books, created by a gerontologist and a speech pathologist, have a simple structure: No recall is required from page to page, with each book centering around a general topic rather than containing a story with a throughline. Images are key, too, in eliciting engagement from the residents.
Ever since Piezzo first began reading with the residents at the start of November, Cindy Pickard, the activities director at Epsom Health Care Center, has seen these interactions have a positive impact on those who participate.
“It’s a sense of belonging,” she said. “It’s a sense of actually doing something that’s productive. A lot of us have gone to book clubs and have done the same thing that we’re doing, in a deeper level, and it’s just a sense of normalcy, really.”
Each resident has the opportunity to read aloud to the group. For those who are nonverbal or find themselves unable to read that day, Piezzo gives them the chance to interact with the material in a different manner.
“I just hold the book and read and point the words as we go to see if that triggers any recognition, and also just to make sure that they’re still included,” he said.
He described these interactions as “trust-building time” designed so “nobody feels left behind.” The content of the books does that, too.
“It does set it up to reduce that kind of frustrations or failures,” he said.
Three of Piezzo’s four grandparents had dementia or Alzheimer’s, so he witnessed firstand the sense of isolation people with these conditions can experience. Piezzo began holding reading sessions with individuals with memory loss almost a decade ago back in Connecticut, where he previously worked.
This past summer in Epsom, he decided he wanted to find a way to bring these interations through books into the local community, so he reached out to Deborah Dutcher, accessible library services consultant at the State Library’s Talking Books division. Dutcher had funds set aside for new projects and was able to help Piezzo launch a pilot program with Reading2Connect.
“One of the most important things in combating dementia is to keep your brain moving, and that this is what they’re doing, they’re keeping their brains moving,” she said.
Both Dutcher and Piezzo underwent training with the newly-purchased collection of several dozen books before Piezzo began going to Epsom Health Care Center last month.
“It broadens the scope of maybe what people could expect from a library,” Piezzo said.
Dutcher also hopes to soon introduce several iPads to the program.
“There are certain books that are not in print; they’re just downloadable to the iPad,” she said “That’s another thing that is really good to to offer when you go into the nursing homes, the iPads, because then they can really magnify the print, if they want to.”
Over the next several months, Piezzo will continue reading with the residents of the Epsom Health Care Center before reporting back to the State Library, at which point the materials will be collected from him and distributed to other libraries in New Hampshire for the same purpose and possibly also be made available to patrons to check out. Concrete next steps will be determined at the conclusion of the Epsom pilot, Dutcher said.
“We’re open to ideas of what is needed and where,” she said. “So, if anybody has any ideas of how we can we can help, I’d love to hear it.”
Having seen the positive energy the group reading brings, Pickard hopes the program will eventually expand to other nursing homes and their memory care units.
“There’s one particular gentleman that doesn’t get engaged very much anymore, and he watches Tom wherever he goes in the room,” she said. “That’s really cool. And I’ve noticed that when, from the time we first started till now, there’s a couple of ladies that are actually reading better.
The chance to connect with people who would not be able to come into the library feels invaluable to Piezzo.
“It’s too easy to forget about people if you don’t see them and interact with them, and I don’t really think that we would do that to any group of people intentionally,” he said. “It’s just one way to make sure we’re inclusive and just also maybe start a conversation, ‘Okay, what are we doing for people?’ Maybe you’re not in an institutional setting yet, but can we provide a library service or another community service?”