Chateau Retirement Communities Executive Director Derek Larson joins Suzanne Newman on the Answers for Elders podcast to give an overview of the Alzheimer’s epidemic and how it’s affecting caregivers. Chateau Retirement is launching a new program primarily for senior living residents with Alzheimer’s and dementia at Chateau Gardens at Chateau at Bothell Landing in Bothell, Washington. Derek talks about the program came about and how it’s going. This week’s show was recorded at Chateau Pacific in Lynnwood, Washington.
Derek shares his family experience. “My mom was diagnosed with dementia really, really young. She was only 51 when she passed. And as a 16-year-old kid, I didn’t really know how to process that very well. And it was really challenging. Taking care of her was one of the hardest things ever did in my entire life. And was one of the most isolating times in my life. And so, going full 360 to being here today and having this opportunity, it means the world to be able to give back to the people that really need that love, and care, and that don’t need to have less than a life just because they have this disease.”
He adds, “It’s a blessing to be a part of the seniors that we get to serve. Meeting them in their journey, where they’re at, especially the most vulnerable, vulnerable population. Those with Alzheimer’s and dementia, they don’t often have a voice for themself. As of 2020, over 7 million people have been diagnosed with dementia. We know that by 2030 through 2050, it’s only going to grow exponentially. We knew there was a growing demand, we knew there was a need, and too often we were seeing that those needs weren’t getting met to the best [that] I think that they could. It’s just such a under-served population that we really, really felt the need to meet those people’s needs as best we could. And so we decided to fully revamp the programs we were offering. And we created a task force to work on revamping that as well.
“As a team, we interviewed tons of our own staff. We interviewed some of our senior leadership. We toured many communities around the area to see where memory care units and communities were really knocking it out of the park in certain areas, or just in general. We did tons of research. We worked in the space as much as we could. I spent months just kind of observing the interaction between resident and staff along with some of the rest of our team.
“Through all of that, we came to the realization that at the core of the heart of what we needed to accomplish was create a place of belonging where we’re treating the resident, not the disease. We wanted to create a space where people feel like it’s home. They belong. Our our mission and vision across the whole community is that people feel like they’re at a place where they can be happy, healthy, live long lives. They can be engaged in whatever ways they want. It’s just harder to do in that space, because people are not as able to vocalize their wants and needs. The whole process that we came up with was trying to get to the core of what those desires are for the for those residents, and meet them where they are on their journey.
“The biggest surprise is that it was really simple. It’s not easy, but it’s really simple. What people need is understanding who we are serving. It’s just such a simple thing that just gets missed because people are so stuck on treating dementia and Alzheimer’s instead of treating the person in front of them.
“We can see it quickly, even though we’re still in the process of implementing everything we would like to. It didn’t take long to just get a sense when you walk into a place of the way it feels. There’s an energy, and you get an energy from the residents where you see them engaged, you see the staff engaged, you see smiles, you see family getting more involved. You see the rest of the community who have friends in memory care that had the stigma against it, and now feel like they feel empowered to be there and they want to be there. What we strive for is to be a community.
The spousal impact … was another light bulb moment for us. I mean, we’ve seen it over and over, caregiver burnout or a spouse becomes that. Another thing we continue to see is, as the spouses are able to relinquish that challenge of caring for their spouse, how much they can just come back into their full selves being just a spouse, and not a caregiver, and how great it is for them and for for their loved one, and the knowledge that if your spouse, if they’re going to become a resident with Chateau at Chateau Gardens, there’s this element of knowing that they’ll be loved. You’re not moving them into like this clinical environment where they feel isolated.”
Derek says, “So we had to have individualized care plans. That meant more than just the physical needs, but also their preferences and their histories that we wanted to get. We needed to get the feedback from families to get them involved, where they can say, ‘Mom always likes a glass of milk with her meal.’ Mom may not be able to speak for that. Getting to know their biographies on who you know, who they are, the things that they enjoyed, the things that they still enjoy, and maybe can’t verbalize.
“We wanted to target holistic well-being as we implemented all these changes. So not just the physical, like I said, but things that would stimulate memory, creativity, cognitive function, activities that would involve Alzheimer’s and dementia as a scale. So you have some that are, you know, very high functioning and some have progressed further, meeting the unique individual where they’re at… It has to be so fluid, and every day is different for the individual. Everything we do is very nimble and able to be adapted. And, you know, just hiring the type of people that envision that space. Being somewhere where they’d want their own mom to live here. Because then they can really bring that mission vision to life.”
Chateau at Bothell Landing is located at 17543 102nd Ave NE in Bothell, Washington 98011-3787.
Chateau Retirement provides independent living, assisted living, and memory care services. They have been locally owned and family operated for more than 25 years. Chateau Retirement has three communities in Washington’s Seattle/Puget Sound area: Chateau Pacific in Lynnwood, Bothell Landing in Bothell, and Chateau Valley Center in Renton.
Visit them online or call 800.960.1944. Also visit Chateau’s specialist page on Answers for Elders to hear more of their shows.
Check out our affiliate podcast Alzheimer’s Speaks.
