dementia care, cognitive decline

May is Older American's Month  -- service is local, but standards of care can be national.  As the AoA puts it, unleash the power of age. And the federal government wants to help those who are aging.  A few weeks ago after ASA ended, I posted about the inverted triangle of associations and federal websites all aiming one way or another at helping older adults. As you may know, there is a Senate Committee on Aging that includes long-term care on its issues list, and a Sub-Committee on Health and Aging that includes renewal of the Older Americans Act. There is a Center for Excellence in Assisted Living (CEAL) that promotes, understandably, improving quality in assisted living. In addition to those national entities, we have the various associations of lobbying, advocacy, and concern. These include senior housing and nursing home groups, LeadingAge, ALFA, and an association of state agencies, NASUAD (home and community services). Is there a navigator tool for consumers that helps decipher the web of entities that are trying to serve? And is there a common framework, a thread that even that connects all of these, other than the words senior, older, aging?

Perhaps you’ve seen them, idle and bored 'memory' care residents.  If you study the calendar at a typical dementia care setting (adult day, assisted living, or nursing home) – it is possible to find a time of day in when there are no facilitated activities underway. Before and after meals, perhaps – a time period stretching an hour or more. The TV is on or music is playing. The day or evening shift staff members are doing a variety of chores, nurses are dispensing and recording medication doses – and residents are wandering or seated, in wheel chairs perhaps, or perhaps they are repeatedly approaching and deflected from exits.  

We don’t see ourselves as aging with dementia – and neither did senior housing providers.  Chew on this thought from a senior housing strategist, who encourages providers to "look at entryways differently," Traci Bild says. "You often see a lot of furniture where people sleep in the lobby. Instead, make it a place where people can congregate to talk, rather than to sleep, by placing high top tables." Meanwhile, back at the reality ranch, where sitting at high-top tables, uh, may not work so well -- the average age of resident move-in to assisted living is now 87 -- says Allison Guthertz, Vice President, Quality Resident Services at Benchmark Senior Living: "These days when residents move in, they already need help with three to five activities of daily living (ADLs)."