Apartment Adaptations with Lynn Creasy
Lynn Creasy from Foundation House at Northgate talks about adaptive living, various apartment additions that can be made to improve safety. Shower vs. bath, higher toilets, grab bars, safety bars, shower seats. A few other things are adaptive clothing such as socks and velcro clothing.
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*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 is a podcast from a qualified senior care provider, hurt, on the answers for elders radio show. Welcome everyone back to answers for elders radio and I’m here with Lynn creasy from foundation house at northgate. Lynn, welcome back. Thank you for having me. Well, we’re glad you’re here in the month of August and our wonderful summer sunshine and and a little bit of heat, a lot of the heat, a lot of heat. Yeah, Yep, and here we are talking about adaptive living this month, which is huge topic for seniors and they may not know all the little details that can help them, say, stay safe. And one of the great reasons why to move into an even and independent community that has these modifications in is it helps them keep them more safe and independent. And so Lynn, you’ve been gracious enough to agree to kind of go through the little laundry list of the different things that go on inside your apartments that help with safety, and so I just love to have you kind of talk a little bit about that today. Okay, thank you. Adapted living can be one of several things, but it might cover shower versus a bath. He’s far and safety we can get into that a little bit later. Maybe having higher toilets, MMM, for easy seated grab bars, safety bars, hmm. You know, shower seats, having those in the shower for safety also. It might encompass adaptive clothing. MMM. You know, they’re amazing to socks and clothes that are easy to get on and off. Ye, Ll Crow, I’m clothing and thingsout like crow and sweat, something easy to get on and off. Hum. So those are just a few of the things our building is we’ve always been. Foundation House at Northgate were twenty two years old, but our building was made with lots of space, with wide doorways. The flooring is very smooth and easy to get to get around. But we also make accommodations for our residents as as they need them. So they would just most of them are installed, but if something needs to be put in they can just call them. In that sense, tall well, and I’m just going to move over right now to the bathroom, because the bathroom is known to be the most dangerous room and the House and sadly national statistics say over seventy five percent of seniors falls happen in their own home bathroom. I didn’t know that was that high. I knew it was high. It’s really high. It’s it’s over seventy five percent and when you think about that, in little things that can make a different. So even if your senior loved one still lives at home, they should have grab bars. They should have non slip flooring in their bathroom, even if you have to put those little stickers down on the tile, because when water and tile meat meets for a very slippery, sub slippery surface, there we go, they slippery slope. Yeah, and so you know the ideas. Seniors bones are brittle, you know they break easily and you know it. Breaking a hip in some cases could mean that they could never come back home again. And that’s the sad part. And so to and this is really true, that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, because it could mean devastating situations. If a senior falls and breaks a hip, they can’t come back home. They have to, you know, move into a care situation where it might be preliminary to when they really needed to be able to do that. And so having an independent living situation like foundation house, maybe the house is too big for them to handle on their own. This is a good bridge where you could move into a community like yours that’s independent, spend some time with that community, you know, getting to know everybody, while you still have your faculties, you’re still have all your you know, everything is. You’re all still, you know, Independent. You can had drive your own car, you can do whatever you want to do, truly independent limit. Yeah, yeah, and with all the social built that you have the adaptations inside your unit to keep you safe and if you even if you don’t need it today, it doesn’t mean, you know, a month from now you might start to use a grab bar or hang onto the grab bar getting in and out of the shower, things like that. So you, you know, that’s the beauty of having, you know, living in an apartment such as yours, because it really helps a senior stay safe. Yeah, bad, very, very true. I mean, we do things within our community that make it very easy to transition from your home into a safe environment. As far as we don’t have any baths bathtubs. They’re all showers and they have a very, very small lip, so there’s no climbing over that slip of a bathtub, if you will, to get in and take a shower and I wanted to go back just a little bit about you were talking about flooring. HMM. So of course we have a very, you know, special linoleum and the flooring that makes it easy to transition right and move about, but a lot of people want to put their rugs down in the bathroom, which is actually a pretty big no no, because they can slip and slide and, like you said, water can make that, make that happ make them more and even more so, you know, all of those safety modifications are already built into the apartments. Yeah, and that, you know, that’s so huge. It’s like we talked about in aging place. We always talk about pull up the throw rugs. Yet my mom was like the throat rug rug queen, they’re cozy. I mean, I know it’s even I remembered clan. She used to have a doily over the back of her toilet. HMM, you know, like like and little little glass figurines. You know. I’m like, mom, yeah, he’s taking no stuff. I think. I think back to the coziness might be, you know, get those socks that have grippies underneath and where the cozy socks are around, because that is truly cozy and it’s also safe. Well, and I’m going to add one more thing in there. Lighting. Yes, if mom or dad gets up in the middle of the night, no matter where they live, they should have motion detector lights that come on and and that’s something I think that oftentimes gets overlooked because it only takes you know, they might have dropped a towel on the floor right, you know, and Bang, there get they go because it’s in the dark. So lighting is definitely L key. So understand that. There’s there’s all kinds of things out on the market place right now that you can find just right now that you could plug into any sort of outlet that will that has a motion detector on it and those so those just some things I know that certainly can happen. Or the minute the lights go out, you know, it senses that it’s in the dark and it turns on. So right, those are things too that, yeah, yeah, lighting is very important. In fact, if if none of those are available to we have those built in, but if they’re not available to a resident, I would just say leave your bathroom light on. Yeah, that’s the other thing. That’s a good thing to leave it on. Yeah, so we are talking again to Lynn creasy and Lynn is the marketing director. I’ve Foundation House and Lynn tells about where you’re located. Yeah, we are a half of block north of target, near the Northgate Mall, very centrally located off of highway five MM at north gate. Of course it’s in Our Name. Yeah, we are a nonprofit community and we have we are standalone, and so that makes us a little bit unique in that we we run lean and mean. We’re simple and clean. I look at that, I made a rhyme, but are you good? But we’re very centrally located and we have a lot of great amenities and some great residents, both for independent living as well as assistant limit well, and I think it’s it says a lot that you’re an independently owned organization, that you know, you don’t you’re not beholding to big some big for profit chain that is, you know, driving the bottom line, and so you really can customize programs for your residents and do things uniquely that you don’t have to behold to a corporate office. You are your own identity. I like to say that we have a lot of heart and soul with our staff and also a lot of longevity are. Our Chef has been there for twenty two years. Oh my goodness, he’s amazing. Yeah, he’s actually employee number one, and having staff with longevity is it’s pretty important, not just for the residents. But back to our topic. You know, they know the building, they right there, they they’ve worked the building and we know about safety and well in and just coming back to now that we’re in the common areas, obviously every single common area in your in your community is built for making sure that seniors are safe. You know, understanding that there’s railings, likely in the hallways, a different types of ways, so when they come into the dining room, you know there’s there’s little casters on the on the chairs so they can move in and out easier. So those are things I think that are important that I’ve noticed to make seniors feel comfortable in a home environment, but they also have this wonderful ability to be, you know, safe and and looked after if they need to write. Yeah, we really try to personalize things that work for them, whether it’s adjusting a closet or, you know, putting in the grab bars and doing everything that’s special to them. And then in the common areas we really try to provide, like you said, safety among the furniture and the way things are laid out and designed. There’s been a lot of thought into that, but also cleanliness. Our housekeeping is very on top of keeping things sterile and clean and we have antibacterial dispensers throughout the community. Good, so we make sure that we keep our residence clean as well. MMM. And you know, that’s the safety and then just onto the other side, if anything prey tale would happen. There’s medical stuff on site. CORRECI is really, really, really important and you know, so if there’s an issue with you know, maybe maybe there’s just you wake up and you don’t feel good, you got the flu, you know, you need you need some help or something. You’re not feeling really well or you know, there’s somebody there that can tend to your needs, which is really important. We do have twenty four seven staff both at the front desk and in the nursing department. And, as far as you know, not feeling well, we have delivery if you’re sick, you know, for food, so you can not miss a meal as long as you’re feeling up to it. That’s awesome. Yeah, it’s a it’s a it’s a nice community. That’s really nice. So, Lynn, how do we reach you? My our phone number at foundation house at North Gate is five two thousand and six, three hundred and six, one two, seven, five eight, and our website is foundation house ngcom. And as far as contacting us by email, it’s Info at Foundation House and G North Gate town. Awesome. Well, Lynn, thank you again for being on the show today. We’re looking forward to having you back again. Suo Answers for elders radio show with Susan Newman hopes you found this podcast useful in your journey of navigating senior care. 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Originally published August 11, 2019