Cottages, with Kelley Smith

*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 and welcome back everyone to answer for elders radio. And Kelly, you’re back with us. Hi. Hi. I know we’re doing this virtually on the phone because obviously you and I are staying safe. We’re all staying safe and and the wonderful thing about the radio station is is they hook us up virtually, which is really great. So we keep things obviously timing on our you know, we get creative ourselves, and so doing things virtually one of the things that we talked a little bit about today as early as you know, getting together with your loved ones over the holidays, but really talking about dialing in about first we talked about figger park communities and those are popping up all over the place. But now I want to zero in on the cottages. And you guys have how many cottage communities right now? Do you have a lot? Oh, you’re going to make me kiunt them off, take my shoes off. So hang on. I know it starts is far north as Mary’s Villa and it goes all the way down to Lithia. Doesn’t it blaze like these are for the south and then we’re building in spoken right now. So we’re got a lot of things happening yes and so in a nuts cell. What are the cottages? Explain to our listeners. With the cottages are the cottages? Is The care partner’s footprint for our very specialized dementia care communities, and we actually even have a tagline. It’s we call it. Until there’s secure, there’s the cottages. We’re very proud of all of you. And tell us a little bit about what the design in the concept is the caught the design is four to five small cottages and the way we design these is it started with the cottages of Mill Creek and it’s set up to be we know that in the journey residents go back in time. Okay, in their journey, they go back to a place where they feel safe in their mind. It’s usually a small home. It’s usually back when they would have raised a family. There wasn’t a lot of people, lots of comings and goings. So the house design seems to be the safest where residents go back in time, where they feel the safest. You’ll hear residents with dementia talk about going home. I want to go home and write. The home is a place, it’s a feeling and all senders association keep the snow, a lot of pack trainers will tell you this. So basically, the home is a safety it’s a feeling of being safe. This design is as a wonder loop on the inside, wonder loop on the outside, helps the resid and feel safe. But it’s they have their own room, but it’s designed again to help them be successful and again help them feel safe. Yes, and and there’s there’s anywhere between ten to twenty people in each cottage and they have their own little family unit. They eat together, but they have a supportive environment and again, that support supportive environment is all set up for them to feel safe, connected, successful and its independent. Is They can be. You don’t want to take things from them. When they live in a cottage. Is Do they have their own bedroom area? Then it have they have either private or shared rooms. It depends on what’s best for the resident. All right, residents do really well with a shared room because, okay, we had an example with a woman. The minute her mom developed dementia, she moved in to her mom’s bedroom and stayed with her for four years. Okay, then she decided that her mom needed to come live with us. Well, the problem is you can’t take mom out of a home, away from you and and put her in a strange place and expect her to do well. He said, look, we want to just try this. Can we put her in a shared room for a while and just see how she does? She thrived if we would have put her in a private room. I don’t think they’ve done one. And so again you have those options. Some people do really well with the roommate. Not Everybody does. So you do have those options. But again it’s a little house with a little kitchen, bathrooms, own space. But they become a family and these things. Isolated Suzanne, who isolated before, will come to a table and sit and talk. It’s amazing. It’s the most amazing thing you’ve ever seeing. The activities also had to be geared around success, not entertainment. You’re going to take a sense living people and they’re going to play beano, they’re going to play cribbage, they’re going to get together and visit. They’re going to do things different than memory here, memory care. We’ve lost our our our reason to be. We were doing we don’t feel neither anymore. So these folks are going to help set the table, they’re gonna they’re going to do things in a family unit that make them feel like I’m part of something. Again, big difference. While well and I think the other thing what you because you have trained staff, is you have methods of reaching someone with dimension Alzheimer’s that the average person doesn’t necessarily know. Like we’ve talked so many times about music, but it’s more about there’s different types of ways. When you talked about language and how language can be done in multiple different ways, and that’s the amazing thing, is having that professional staff that understands and that is especially trained to work with those with Alzheimer’s dementia exactly. They have to be specialty trained and that’s the thing we actually have on our staff, a couple of pack trainers that have gone through the entire your listeners, they might not understand what that means, but you have to have. Every single one of your CNAS have to go through. State requires that they go through specialty dimension training. It just is what it is. Okay, there’s not an open dimension training they have to go through, but you have to remember too, a lot of folks coming out of classes right now are strictly taught task training. As they’re taught, they going to be class of taught how to do a shower, to how to dress. So taught, taught tasks. So then we get a mold of them and you got to back some of that off and teach them restsident centered tasks and more residents center. So while you’re dealing with that, you know you will have to slow things down and show them kind of more how we do things with that for that specialized dementia training, because it is slower. Are you can it’s more about the resident and how they see the world. Right. It’s very different, but it makes rewarding too, because again, residents aren’t going to the demential world is so different and it’s about successful day. These you’re not going to have her. You can’t promise day. It has to be and what work today work well. And I think the other thing is as a daughter, I know as my mother. My mom did not have to dementia to the degree where she had to go into the megic care, but she was. She did lose several of her faculties, like we talked about in the last segment, like language was a little bit mixed up, but she always knew who she was, she always knew who I was, and there wasn’t that piece. But she did need a level of twenty four hour care, so she was in skill nursing it towards the end. But the thing that is important, I think, with with for me as a daughter and I think for our families, is is that your staff or the staff that takes care of your parent can help you be a better daughter and be the daughter or be the sun, and I think that’s one of the things that, no matter what kind of mindset that your parent is in, whether it’s into mental or anything like that, it’s important for our family members to understand that they will always be the daughter and they were always be the sun and to try to take on other roles can not be good for a senior because you’re talking about their digniti dignity and their quality of life, and I think that’s one of the things that you’ve touched on so many times. As you know, making sure that the professionals candle the things that are most important. You know, when we talk a little bit about, you know, dementic Hare, there’s a lot of things that maybe difficult for, let’s say, daughter to take care of a father when it comes to a father has to wear diapers or things like that, where a professional can handle that with much more dignity. Don’t you agree with that? Well, well, course, and let’s just be really honest, Susanne, one of the things that I learned a long time ago. My mom has been many, many years. My mother had surgery on her tummy and poor thing had several surgeries in a very small pod of time and they said, well, you can go home if you had some help. And I said, well, I got time, I’ve all come help you, and she looked at me and said the hell you will, and I went, excuse me, I’m your daughter. If anybody’s going to take time off to take care of you, it’ll be me, and she said here, get over, you can here. And basically what she explained to me was I’ve wiped your butt. Well, okay, HMM, I I understood at that moment. We’re all just when I don’t care who you are. You can be the vice president of sales, you can be a nurse, you can be whoever you are. When it’s somebody’s parent, all you are is somebody’s kid and in that moment you think streat when you or somebody’s kid. If I could sick right now and I had to have a parent come over and take care of me, it wouldn’t be disturbing to them because they’ve already seen my behind. It’s just got older. That small MOM’s already wanted my booty. There’s no there’s no dignity issue for that room to flip. It’s a dignity issue and that’s where anybody listening to your show, I hope they understand. It’s not that your parents don’t love you. It’s not that they don’t they don’t want you to be. They don’t. That’s all it is. It’s a dignity issue. They don’t want you to be to take care of them. Then he will always be the daughter or the Sun. Even when my father passed away, when he’s eighty eight years old. He passed a week and he said to me how many times by you know, I was in the cool my dad passed them and he said to me you’ll always be daddy for girl. Always I was always daddy’s little and like when my dad had his heart issues, I told my mom get a pair of swim trunks. You know, there’s ways to do this so that my brothers can help without disturbing my father’s respect and dignity. They’re still a way to do it right, you know. You put swim chunk trunks on him, put him in the shower, voice can get his back in his hair and then they step out. Let him take care of what he needs to. Nobody’s disturbed the apple cart. I get it. However, you also have to understand that there’s still things that need to happen and with dementia it’s not always that simple because, because the dementia, Dad might not understand he’s wearing swim trunks. He just understands he’s in the shower and that’s my son. So you again. I think the most beautiful thing that companies like mine do is we let you go back to being the sun other daughter. I love that. I love that. You know, or whatever it is, we’re going to do the how the job brace awesome, awesome. So how do we read too? Care Partners Livingcom is simple, because then you can go on and and read testimonials, look at the pictures. They’re going to tell you. I can say all kinds of things. Pictures don’t lie. Get on there and take I agree. I agree, and to all of our listeners, I first of all I want to thank Kelly so much for being on the show today and had happy, happy holidays to you, Kellie, and all of you at care partners we are so greatful for you, and happy holidays, Mary, Christmas, and have a happy new year well. Thank you so much, who’s Anne, for letting US come on here. We appreciate everything you do for our seniors and we’re so grateful and partner with you well. We’re grateful to have you. Thanks again everyone, and until next week, be good to each other. The preceding podcast was provided by care partners living and answers for elders radio. To contact care partners living, go to care partners livingcom