I’m Blake Anderson with A Banyan Residence. So a day in the life of a typical resident starts with our caregivers at waking each resident up and helping them shower, get dressed and groomed for the day.
They then head down to the clubhouse to our dining room for breakfast where they typically sit in arrangements of four people and generally it is the same group that they’ve made either organically friends with or folks that we think have very similar interests to them and have potential to have a spirited conversation and long-term friendships with eventually.
After breakfast, we do have a full slate of activities scheduled and that residents can choose to participate in or not.
For example we publish a calendar monthly of each activity on each day and using just today for an example, after breakfast, folks have an opportunity to do a parachute exercise, geography trivia, current local events and Mad Libs and all of that is before lunch.
After these activities are done, people generally move back to the clubhouse to the dining room for lunch followed by another schedule of activities. Again today for example, bingo for prizes, a happy or social hour and hangman.
After the afternoon activities, residents come back to the dining room for dinner and then start to wind down for the evening. This can be sitting in our activity room watching TV or playing cards or reading a book whether it be in our – in the gardens, on their porch, in their living room, wherever they like and then our caregivers will help change them into their evening clothing and help them wind down and make sure they’re comfortable for the night.
What’s important for residents with cognitive decline is that there is a routine and structure because that is what generally makes them happier and feel safer.
So the way that we achieve this is that we do have a set routine. We do use the same caregiver so that there is a friendly face that they’ve become used to as well as a schedule of activities that they’re confident that they can predict what is going to be coming.
With that said, while structure is important, we do slightly tweak our schedule so that the residents don’t get bored or complacent with the repeated activities.
Ultimately if a resident does want to participate in all of our activities, they will have stimulation from dawn until dusk. On the other side of that coin, if a resident does want to relax, we do make sure that they have that ability as well.
It’s very frequent that we find our resident sitting outside of the room on their patio reading, looking at the koi pond or even just watching the weather passing.
