CEPD 8102 Lifespan Human Development
Community Service Presentation
Name of Organization: Freedom Pointe Assisted Living
75 Magnolia Street
Roswell, GA 30075
770-645-1900
Name of Contact Information: Lisa Crumbley, Life Enrichment Coordinator
770-645-1900
Purpose of the Organization: The goal of the organization is to give the elderly a safe and caring environment and to keep them active and healthy to the end of their lives. They work toward those goals by offering diverse activities, nursing care 24 hours a day, caregivers for any resident who need them and dietary monitoring to supervise the intake of food.
What developmental needs does the organization meet? This stage of life can be very difficult for an older person. They are in many cases moving to the facility from the home they've lived in for many years. They might be moving far from their families and might be living without their partner for the first time. This can be a frightening, lonely stage of their lives. Freedom Pointe creates a personal plan for each resident which takes into consideration their physical, spiritual, emotional, intellectual and social needs. They try to keep the residents active and engaged so that they can stay intellectually challenged.
Clients Served: There are 66 residents in Freedom Pointe. Their ages range from the mid-60s to 100 years of age. During my community service, I worked with 15 residents in their 80s taking them to the fireworks display on the 4th of July. I played trivia and bingo with a dozen or so residents and hosted the same number for happy hour. I helped the Life Enrichment Coordinator take ten residents to Wal-Mart. There were only two men in all the activities. For some reason, the men do not take part in the socialization activities. The women are very involved socially and make an effort to attend the gatherings with their friends.
Staff Members: Freedom Pointe has seven directors: Executive Director, Business Manager, Life Enrichment Director, Wellness Director, Maintenance Director, Marketing Director, and Food Service Director. They have a dining room staff, chefs and housekeeping staff. There are receptionists, caregivers, and LPN's that handle the medications. Each department has their own staff. In the dining room, servers serve the food and the kitchen staff prepares the food. The housekeeping staff cleans rooms and common areas and does laundry. The activities assistant helps direct crafts, exercise, games and events. There are 60-65 staff members.
Facil
ities: Freedom Pointe offers studio and one-bedroom apartments with kitchenettes. Their amenities include a library, wellness and fitness center, patio, ice cream parlor, beauty salon, laundry room, recreation room and meeting room. The living room has a warm, cozy feel to it and residents congregate around the fireplace in the winter. The exercise room has machines for physical therapy and many exercise classes are held throughout the week for residents to take part in.
Activities available for residents: A copy of the monthly calender is available at the following link:
http://www.brookdaleliving.com/Newsletters/52430AL.pdf-
Description of work: I started my day off (4th of July) by meeting several of the residents and then running the Trivia contest after lunch. This is an informal gathering the main living room of the center. Residents come and go during the Trivia
contest depending on their lunchtime and interest level. It is designed to provide time for them to interact and to keep their minds active. That evening we took the center's bus to a fireworks display at a local school. We set up chairs for everyone and unloaded them from the bus. We had to be very careful as the ground was not completely flat and all of them are frail and unsteady on their feet. We go them settle in their chairs and went to work lighting a grill and cooking hot dogs and s'mores. WE had 15 residents and three volunteers along with the Activities Director, Lisa. It took every one of us to pull this evening off. The display was beautiful and the residents really seemed to enjoy the evening out. They all ate hot dogs and s’mores and were grateful to all of us for taking them out.
On July 7, I helped Lisa with two exercise classes. There were nine residents in the first class and five in the second. All either were using walkers or wheelchairs. The exerc
ises were conducted sitting in chairs and we used elastic bands, rubber balls, and light free weights. Each class lasted for 45 minutes. Later in the day I helped another volunteer run the bingo game. Fourteen residents played. It's pretty fierce! Those ladies want to win. They play for $2-$5 of play money that is used to "buy" items at a weekly auction. Trinkets are donated by volunteers and family to auction off. We played for an hour, and my job was to keep track of the winners and hand out the money after each game. After bingo is Happy Hour. They serve chips, dip, nuts and drinks (even wine). All the bingo players attended Happy Hour, but it was over in about 30 minutes.
On July 9, I helped Lisa take ten residents on the bus to Wal-Mart to shop. It takes about 15 minutes to load the residents and their walkers and wheelchairs onto the bus. I learned how to use the automatic wheelchair lift and helped two ladies get on and off the bus. I helped others on and off the bus with their walkers and loaded the walkers onto the back of the bus in a storage compartment. When we got to Wal-Mart we unloaded and got the residents into the automatic carts in the store so they would be able to shop more comfortably. It takes them a long time to shop because they don't remember where everything is. I accompanied several ladies around the store to shop.
I plan to go back to Freedom Pointe next week to help a crafts class paint vases. I have also inquired about the possibility of going there regularly to read to the residents.
Relation to Learning: Working at Freedom Pointe has made an impact on my life. Erik Erikson's developmental theories apply to this community service in his last two stages of life: generativity and integrity. While I have not gotten to know the residents of Freedom Pointe well, I can see the influence of these two stages on my life. I am in the process of finding an independent living situation for my parents after just having my youngest child graduate from college. I am struck by the changes in my life and both ends of my family.
Erikson states that generativity can be observed by the way older people help out younger ones. I try to contribute to the lives of young people in my job as a media specialist by attempting to instill a love for reading and books in the students. I also hope to inspire a future broadcaster by making our broadcast team a fun experience for the children.
Erikson also observed that the life cycle is epigenetic and that people need to rework tasks of development. This is obvious at Freedom Pointe in that they are always encouraging the residen
ts to stay active and participate in the activities they offer. Erikson says that people cannot find significance in the learning they have achieved in solitude. They need to make social connections. The residents are offered many learning experiences. They can reconnect with skills they might have learned earlier in their lives like painting or cooking, but they can also learn about new places through their travelogues to far-away countries or skills like computer technology. Their calendar is filled with opportunities to learn. They can still grow intellectually.
The activity theory (as offered by several researchers) seems to be alive and well at Freedom Pointe. They have a "use it or lose it" attitude toward their residents. The happiest residents seem to be the involved ones. You could hear it in the voices of the ladies playing bingo and having a glass of wine at the Happy Hour. This socialization is the major reason I am encouraging my parents to move into an independent living facility. They have become more and more disengaged from a social circle. All of their friends are dying and they have little reason to leave home. I believe a facility with many activities and new friends will give them renewed energy and zest for life.
Baltes's theory of plasticity showed that if you give older adults training in figural relations, they are more likely to improve their cognitive abilities. Freedom Pointe offers their residents opportunities to work with crossword puzzles, trivia, card games and other spatial and inductive reasoning games to sharpen their cognitive skills. I had the chance to play trivia and bingo with the residents and it was amazing how well some of them did in the games.
When you spend time with the elderly, you cannot help but think about how great a role genetics plays in how you age. Many theories come into play. The genetics-programming theories that hold that a genetic timetable is built into your genes come to mind. Also, the variable rate theories that state that each person is programmed randomly and affected by the environment. Another theory is that aging can confuse the body and release antibodies to attack the body's own cells (autoimmune theory). Spending time watching the residents attempting to exercise was discouraging. Most of them could not replicate the motion I was demonstrating, and if they could, they could not do more than a couple of the motions in a row. It makes you want to start a crash diet and exercise program to last the rest of your life!
The experience at Freedom Pointe was a culminating activity in the study of developmental theory in my Lifespan Human Development class. The community service was meaningful and added to the readings and lectures of the class. It has made me more aware of the challenges of aging and, hopefully, more patient and understanding with elderly people.
Success Stories: Freedom Pointe understands older people and their challenges. They attempt to keep the residents active, safe, and content. They realize that the residents are in their last stage of their lives and they want them to stay healthy and happy for as long as they can. They do this by creating a caring atmosphere and providing opportunities for the residents to stay involved in their lives. They have many success stories. Some residents come to them for respite care. They have been able to rehabilitate many of them to return to their own homes and their own lives again. Other success stories are when a resident is able to stay in the assisted living facility without having to ever go into a skilled nursing facility. It sounds ironic to say that one of their successes is having the residents die there in peace and dignity instead of having to go to a hospital or nursing home.
Problems faced by staff members: The biggest challenge is the economy and budget cutbacks which force staff members to be eliminated and services to be reduced. However, Lisa Crumbley states that their mission statement says that if they take care of the residents first, the rest will take care of itself. It sounds good, but the truth is that when you reduce the budget, you have to reduce the activities, which reduces the effectiveness of the program. Every aspect of care is affected by budget cutbacks (food, caregiving, housekeeping, maintenance). It must be a very stressful, frustrating time for elder caregivers.
Potential solutions or improvements: If funds were unlimited, I would hire more staff and add more activities and entertainment opportunities for the residents. I can see the
positive effect of giving the residents options for staying active. If I could change things but had to stay within the current budget, I would seek out more volunteers to help them through this difficult economic time. Many of the activities require no money--just the people to help staff them. I would also like to see some schools adopt the facility as their community outreach projects. Students could come to the facility and "Adopt a Grandparent" or perform songs for them.
References:
Brown, S. & Park, D. (2003). Theoretical models of cognitive aging and implications for translational research in medicine. The Gerontologist: Special Issue 1: Challenges of traditional research on aging, 43, 57-67. (Document ID: 318787361).
Fritsch, T., McKee, J., Smyth, K., & Lerner, K. (2007). Cognitive functioning in healthy aging: The role of reserve and lifestyle factors early in life. The Gerontologist, 47(3), 307-22. (Document ID: 1297418181).
Schroots, J. (1996). Theoretical developments in the psychology of aging. The Gerontologist, 36(6), 742-748. (Document ID: 10531217).
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