All About Assisted Living, with Keith Roberts

*The following is the output of transcribing from an audio recording. Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases it is incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors.

The following podcast is provided by care partners, living and answers for elders radio. Back to answers for elders radio with Keith Roberts, who was the business development manager at Vineyard Park Covington in Covington, Washington. And Keith, thank you for being here and having us here at this beautiful facility and again we’re inviting everyone to come down, come and take a look at this amazing community and and and take a look at just what all is possible, because the world has changed and we’re going to spend this segment Um. I’m really excited because I think we just need to pull in a little bit about what is it that you’re looking at for senior living and how can you even fathom of what’s here and what happened? So, Keith, for example, I just gave an example right before we went off the on a commercial about the fact that we had a if you have, let’s say mom needs help and Dad’s fine, dad’s still independent, what happens when they can visit you? Well, we actually have a copyright on our bonded pairs program and what that means is is say mom doesn’t need any care, dad does need care. They could come and live together. The care can be provided for Dad. Mom can live independently. We’ll have an individualized care plan specifically tailored to Dad’s needs. And if dad ever needed memory care and it started to not be safe for him to stay here at Vineyard Park, we could literally move him across the parking lot and he could stay with us in memory care as well. She could go visit him whenever she wants. She can take him out and take him to activities on this side. Um, there’s so many options. If she needed to go to the grocery store and just need a little break, she can bring him back. Uh. There’s not a lot of options like that throughout the state of Washington, right, right, and I think that’s what’s so important, is having the ability for people to stay together and having that type of care. So if you can move in and you don’t have to pay if you don’t need care but your spouse does, you don’t need to pay for assisted living. You can actually live independently and your spouse can have the assisted living. How does that work? Yeah, so basically they would talk to our nurse and we would come up with the care plan for the individual who needed care and the person who’s coming in on independent living. They, you know, just would live normally, just like they always would, except for they’d get a few perks. UH, they would get clean their room clean once a week. UH, they would get their breakfast, lunch and dinner made for them. Um. So they would get some perks. And then the on the assisted side. They wouldn’t have to worry about having to take care of their husband or wife because laundry staking care of, clean room cleaning is taken care of. If they need help bathing, that’s taken care of. If they need help eating, that’s taken care of. If they need help with anything, you don’t have to go shopping unless you want to. You don’t have to worry about all those things and dietary needs or anything like that. In caregiving is overwhelming for the spouse that’s still independent. So having that ability for you, for them both to be together is so important and it frees up space for you know, the stress factor on the person that’s still vibrant and going, but you still can stay there and know that your loved one is getting the best care possible. Yeah, so, Keith then, as let’s just say, you progress obviously the thing that’s really great about care this facility and care partners is now you are always there to provide care for them. So how is care just? I know everybody does it differently. Some people just charge a flat rate. You’re on is just a living and it’s like three thousand dollars, right. You guys don’t do it that way, do you? Well, it depends on what side you’re on. So you’re on the independent and assist living side and there are care charges. There’s five levels of care. That’s what I was saying about the five levels. I didn’t clarify. Yeah, yeah, and and so we don’t have like if you’re this, this and this, then you’re automatically a level three. We have a point system so you can have an individualized care plan and you’re not going to get charged for things that that you’re not taking. You’re not getting. Yeah, and with memory care we have a flat rate Um. So if you come in and you’re a level two, that’s going to cover your care, your medication management, that’s going to cover all of your food, that’s going to cover everything that you could possibly need over there, and it’s it’s a very unique approach to memory care and very, very doing very well well, and you know that’s a good thing. We’re going to talk about the cottages in a minute because I think that’s really an important thing. So in assisted living though, here, Um, you have a full time nurse, a director of nursing and you have a nursing staff. So tell us a little bit about what what the nursing stuff does. Yeah, so, Um, you know, day to day they’re gonna go and they’re going to look at the individualized care plans of the residents and and they know, uh, specifically, each one of our residents very well. They’re gonna know their care plans very well and they’re reviewed regularly. So you know, they’re gonna know. Well, Cindy may drop her, you know, uh controller quite a bit. So we need to check on her every once in a while to make sure that she has her tv controller on her couch. Um, you know Cindy needs to have compression socks. Uh. We need to make sure that Dave gets his help in the shower. So they’ll go through manage their medications, whatever the case, maybe, and each one has an individualized care plan that they can review and they know their residents very intimately. And here’s the beauty of this that I’m going to bring up right now too. If you’re a family member, you have a right to have a care conference with the community any time you ask for one. So if you have questions regarding the care plan or you wouldn’t need understanding, or if you want to meet with the Dietitian, you want to meet with a physical therapist, anyone on staff, you have the right to do that, do you not? Yeah, absolutely, anytime. Mel Greg, we actually have extra nursing staff here because Greg is also a nurse. So he started with our company as a nurse, which is really nice because sometimes if you just need that little bit of extra nurse there. Um, most of our buildings wouldn’t have that. This building in particular does, just because we have greg as our executive director and he’s also an LPN. That’s awesome. That’s awesome. So we can we can meet with families. Great, can speak to that, melk and speak to that. You know, they have all the Um, I don’t know the word I’m looking for. They’re they’re very available at any time. Yeah, and I think to having that dialogue with the staff is so important. Um, you know, just to understand too that, especially if mom or dad have dementia or they have different types of situations that you, as a family member may you know, our listeners they know things about their loved ones that they want to make sure that you are aware of and they’re going to pick up on things that you may not necessarily know. They may say something that you didn’t necessarily Um, you know, translate. I know my mother is her dementia progressed. She started her life speaking Swedish and so then she learned English as a child. so as she progressed, guess what language she started speaking the time. You see it all the time. Yeah, so it’s interesting because obviously the staff here’s these amazing caregivers that she had, and a lot of them were, you know, Filipino and and, you know, East are Asian, you know, Southeast Asian, and Um, they’re speaking Swedish back to her. It was so fun. So as far as doing that. So then we move on to now we’ve been talking about dementia. You have an amazing concept with the cottages. Tell us a little bit about why they’re so unique. Yeah, so, over the last thirty to forty years, uh, the industry as a as a total kind of approached memory care in two kind of ways. Um, you’d build these big, beautiful assisted living buildings and you pick out a hallway and you put the residents in a hallway and locked the door exactly and and you know, that was our memory care way, and that was to lock the door for their protection. It isn’t to I mean to isolate them, it’s just that those that have Alzheimer’s have a tendency to want to wander and so it’s very common, very common, and we don’t want anyone to get lost and not be able to find their way home unsafe, and so that was the first Um, you know, that was one of the two ways that they really approached memory care. And the other way was is they build these big buildings and put about eight residents living with dementia in the same place, which was very overstimulating for the residents, cause behaviors and that sort of thing. So care partners came up with a new concept and they said, you know, why don’t we split it up and shrink it down so it’s stimulating without being over stimulating, and we have three separate cottages and administration buildings, so it’s always four buildings and it’s connected by a beautiful courtyard. There’s beautiful artwork out there, beautiful flowers and plants and all sorts of things out there for the residents to look at and they’re not locked inside their cottages all day. It is secured on the outside. You know about anybody wandering off, but you don’t get that I need to escape feeling that you would get in the hallway and you don’t get the I’m so over stimulated because there’s so many people here and you could walk to the other building and you can go, you know, take take a little jaunt here and there and everywhere. That’s right. Yeah, yeah, and UH. So the cottages are all identical. UH, they’re very beautiful. Living Room, dining room, kitchenet and everything goes in a circle. We designed those buildings specifically to take people through all stages of dimension end of life. So every little thing we did, every detail, was based off of Statistics and facts over the years. Dark bold colors on everything. Everything goes around in a circle and we actually made the rooms just a little bit smaller to encourage the residents to stay out of the room because of you know, in our last segment you were talking little decline. Yeah, so we want to encourage our residents to come out and we want to encourage them to engage with the other residents or at least even just watch people engage in activities in that work. So for each and every one of you, please think about coming and touring this amazing community. And you can’t do it this weekend, call during the month of August. Don’t you guys have a special going right now? We do. Yeah, if you move in before August thirty one, I will waive your community fee completely, so no community fee Um, which would save you, you know, just under two thousand dollars. That’s incredible. That’s incredible and certainly we look forward to just seeing how amazing this community will grow and be such an vibrant part of the Covington area. And so, Keith, thank you so much for having Susan and I appreciate it. I’m so glad you guys got to come out today. Thank you. The preceding podcast was provided by care partners living and answers for elders rady. To contact care partners living, go to care partners living dot com. m