What Is ‘embrace’ Care for Seniors?

At Senior Lifestyle, our commitment to exceptional care extends to every resident and family member we serve. We focus not only on the physical aspects of care, but also on the emotional, mental, and spiritual needs of those we serve.

For families dealing with Alzheimer’s or another form of dementia, the search for senior living can be especially daunting. That’s why we created embrace, an award-winning philosophy of connection and inclusion aimed at providing more than just activities for people living with dementia. It provides an enriching, fulfilling lifestyle for our memory care residents.

What Does embrace Offer?

The principles upon which we built embrace – Wellness, Enrichment, Challenge, Connection and Creativity – direct for our philosophy for those living with dementia. The programs in embrace provide our residents opportunities to be engaged to experience socialization, connection, and meaningful moments. These programs include:

• Bookmarks is a reading program designed for residents with Alzheimer’s and related dementias providing support through the exploration of the written word. Reading material is specifically selected to allow residents’ success and adapted for their cognitive leves. The material serves as topics for discussion and a bridge to other program offerings.
• Essence is a personalized, multi-sensory experience designed to support each of our residents on their unique journey. The goal is to provide a sensory-based program with the potential to complement existing treatments for the resident. The Essence signature program won the Argentum Best of the Best award in 2016 & 2017.
• Snapshots is designed to provide emotional wellness to both the resident and their family. Through education, programs and support, we focus on keeping family and residents connected through the integration of technology and communication.
• Spark is a lifestyle enrichment program intended to promote cognitive stimulation, connection, and social engagement among residents. Several initiatives in the program provide opportunities to offer not only a variety of programs at various levels but also offer multiple choices to our residents.
• Thymeless is a garden-to-table food program for older adults with dementia. It focuses on empowering memory care residents to grow and prepare healthy, fresh food. Developing habits, skills, and passions in the garden or food preparation and continuing to use them can help residents to feel accomplished, productive, and successful.

What Are the Benefits of embrace?

The embrace program is about connection. We strive to promote dignity and overall well-being in a supportive environment. Dementia and Alzheimer’s patients struggle with activities of daily living, but research has shown residents who are engaged in meaningful activity live longer and maintain their abilities much further into the disease process.

We use the tools outlined in embrace such as the embrace history and the Bradford well being profile to enter our resident’s journey. The embrace team is specially trained to use such toold as as the Bradford Well-Being Profile to identify how a person is fairing based on their current circumstances and level of dementia. This provides us the unique opportunity to focus on helping our residents be their best with their disease.

Residents can engage in embrace while being monitored 24 hours a day 7 days a week. Programs often occur from early morning to after dinner, all the while with an 1:8 caregiver-to-resident ratio.

How Do Families Support embrace?

Caring for those with dementia can be a challenge, but with embrace, you’re not alone. Our families and the partnership we have with them is key to a successful embrace program. We encourage continued connection between our residents and their loved ones though specially designed programs, support and education.

The embrace program supports both the residents and their families. We use an online platform to connect residents with family so they can know daily what programming and experiences their loved ones are experiencing. We can share pictures and videos of the resident participating in those programs.

Family will also partner with us to help the resident feel at home, identifying familiar objects and pictures that will help create safe spaces. This is an essential way to allow the Senior Living team to personalize programs and develop proactive, redirection techniques by learning a resident’s history, routine and personality.

What Does a Day in embrace Look Like?

We create programs that follow the daily rhythm and routine of our residents, providing opportunities for the integration of our resident’s unique habits, skills, interests, and experiences. We strive to create communities where people with dementia come to live active, fulfilling, connected lives.

We customize our programs by using the different dimensions of wellness:

• MOVE (Physical) – Physical activity, nutrition, and health education to encourage self care of the body
• GROW (Intellectual) – Stimulation and use of one’s mind
• FEEL (Emotional) – Experiences that provide support, increase self-esteem, and provide fun
• REFLECT (Spiritual) – Connection to the human spirit and helping us find meaning
• CONNECT (Social) – Development of relationships that provide a deeper connection and opportunity to nurture each other
• CONTRIBUTE (Vocational) – Volunteer pursuits that help residents to reach out to each other and outside the community

This provides our residents with a well-rounded, well balanced, personalized program that is essential in keeping residents engaged and functioning at their highest level. It decreases behavioral expressions, provides much-needed connection, promotes purposeful engagement and adds years onto a resident’s life.

Learn More About embrace

When memories fade, it’s the moments that matter most, and embrace makes the most of every experience for our memory care residents. Senior Lifestyle strives to create inclusive and enriching programs for residents with cognitive or memory issues. The embrace program is a direct result of that commitment, a response to focusing on our residents’ overall well-being. We know that being at your personal best physically and emotionally is essential to thriving.

To learn more about embrace, or any of the programming available at a Senior Lifestyle community near you, contact us today.