So 40% of aged care residents don't

don't get any visitors for 365 days of the year - don't get any visitors.
I don't suppose I should be surprised. Aged care complexes are depressing places to visit. I have spent a good deal of my time going in and out of them. 
I know a lot of elderly people. Some of them are friends of the Senior Cat. Some of them are my friends. Some of them are people I have come to know as I have pedalled to and from the shopping centre or the library.  I have met some of them at the library when they were younger - often because they were looking for something and I was asked to help or they asked me.
I have helped them clear their houses and move into nursing homes when they could no longer cope.
And I have damn well gone to see them once they are there. It doesn't take much. I might only be able to stay a few minutes but it makes all the difference. It makes all difference for no more reason than that if the staff know someone, anyone at all, is coming to visit then they are going to take more care. 
When I do go to visit I make a point of talking to other residents on the way. It is usually nothing more than "hello" and perhaps a comment about the weather or something they are doing but it has never been rebuffed. Occasionally it will be a few minutes chat and they will show me pictures of children or grandchildren or the dog they once had or they will tell me something about their past life.
I go away feeling both happy they had someone to talk to for a few minutes - even me - and depressed at how narrow and dull their lives have become. 
It is why one elderly woman I know refused to move into a nursing home unless she could take her computer with her - complete with the capacity to Skype her family around the world...and she did. I visited her on a regular basis simply because she was still very good company. She didn't let her new home get her down but she also knew she was one of the lucky ones, still intellectually very alert and able to entertain herself.
One afternoon I went to another facility and found the woman I had gone to visit had been taken to "community singing". I followed the noise and found a dozen or so residents sitting staring at words on a screen and listening to rather than singing with an ancient cassette tape recorder. They looked bored, so did the member of staff watching them.
   "Ah, turn that thing off," one of the old men said. "It's Cat. We'd rather talk to her."
Not very polite of him perhaps but, if my company was preferable, they were fed up with such "entertainment". 
But even that sort of "entertainment" is apparently preferable to just sitting staring at the wall when your eyesight and concentration are no longer sufficient to read a book, when your hearing does not allow you to listen as well as watch television (and the programmes bore you anyway).
But it also makes me wonder what happens to those older people who do remain in their own homes without family or friends. It makes me wonder what will happen to my generation when the children have scattered interstate and overseas and the next generation when family ties have, for all too many, weakened.  
It is why we want, if at all possible, to help the Senior Cat stay in his own home with family coming in an out.