When Marilyn Petch leaves her father, Richard, each day, she knows he’s safe and comfortable in his room at The Grove at Piedmont Gardens in Oakland, Calif.
“Dad always said, ‘It feels like it’s home,’” said Petch, an occupational therapist. “I appreciate the safety features built in. I can’t say enough good things.”
The 16 resident rooms at ABHOW’s newest Grove are so well designed, in fact, that the memory care community recently won Best in Category in Long-Term Living magazine’s third annual Remodel-Renovation contest. The awards, given by reader votes, are listed in the magazine’s September edition.
The sixth of ABHOW’s memory support communities, The Grove at Piedmont Gardens features a country kitchen, activity room, dining space and garden designed for residents in the early to middle stages of Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia.
“The goal is to get away from an institutional model and to create a more domestic and residential feel,” said Jeremy Townsend, program manager. “We really want to invite the residents to use their apartment as their bedroom and use The Grove as their home.”
Rooms range in size from 265 to 335 square feet, including large bathrooms that accommodate walkers and wheelchairs. Showers contain seats for resting comfortably. To promote safety, bathrooms are outfitted with lights that operate on an automatic sensor.
“That gives residents an audio-visual cue,” Townsend said. “The resident gets out of bed and is not looking for a light switch or fussing with the door.”
Medicine cabinets are locked so toiletries can be stored safely. Toilet seats are a high-contrast color to better orient residents.
Families decorate rooms with personal furniture and mementos, to prolong connections to the past and present. Storage areas are designed to keep clutter at bay and thus, reduce anxiety for residents. Residents eat meals together and are encouraged to join other community activities.
“We really want them to feel like this is their home, that they have access to and use of the entire space,” Townsend said. “The general thinking is that isolation and a lack of stimulation is going to contribute to a more precipitous decline.”
Keeping residents interested in day-to-day activities gives them a sense of purpose.
“We try to schedule our day so it’s similar to how their lives might have already been,” Townsend said. “They can look at the newspaper, exercise, do a craft project, play a game or watch a movie.”
Marilyn Petch said it was a “no-brainer” to transition her 87-year-old father, who has macular degeneration, into The Grove from his assisted living apartment in the community. Richard Petch first moved to Piedmont Gardens six years ago.
“The programs here – from looking things up on the Internet to sing-alongs to exercise – they’re so stimulating,” said Petch. “And the staff here is fabulous. They are great problem solvers.”
The late Paul Jepson, ABHOW’s assistant vice president of care services, oversaw planning for The Grove and nominated the resident rooms for the magazine award. Jepson passed away in May, just 10 days before The Grove at Piedmont Gardens opened.
About ABHOW:
Founded in 1949, ABHOW is widely known for its pioneering leadership in senior housing and health care. The company serves more than 5,000 residents in 37 retirement communities in California, Arizona, Nevada and Washington.
To learn more about ABHOW visit www.abhow.com.
This article appeared in the October 2011 issue of ABHOW Words
