Creating a community for memory care

Brookdale Senior Living, an assisted living campus in Ithaca, offers three individualized and personal care communities for their residents. 

These communities can be found across the United States. Ithaca has its own branch located on Bundy Road, which is home to three different types of communities.

In Ithaca, there is the enhanced assisted living, memory care community, and a new community that is opening soon. 

The memory care community, Clare Bridge, focuses especially on residents with a cognitive impairment. 

“It is an assisted living community for folks within cognitive impairment, like under the umbrella of dementia,” said Val Turo. Turo was the Program Manager of the Clare Bridge community and is now the Associate Executive Director of the upcoming community, the Crossings. 

The enhanced assisted living community is more generalized care for residents without cognitive impairments. 

Brookdale’s mission statement is about enriching the lives of those they serve through compassion, respect, excellence and dignity.

Tura spoke on how the memory care community allows residents to have each of their personalized needs met, through person-centered care.

“There are different levels of dementia, which I’m sure you know. There are different levels and cognitive impairments,” Tura said. “So, we meet each resident at their level where they are today because we believe in validating each individual resident and validating where they are.”

“We’re unique in the fact that our memory care community is solely memory care. The training – the staff is trained only in dementia care in our Clare Bridge,” Turo said. 

The memory care community offers different programs and opportunities for people who need daily assistance. These programs allow staff to  provide personal care for each resident through person-centered approaches.

“It’s about dignity. You know?” Tura said. “It’s about providing our residents with daily moments of success in the little things they do so that they feel independent and good about themselves.”

The activity programs are about bringing the best optimum life to the residents. The 6 dimensions that Clare Bridge brings to their residents through programming are physical, purposeful, spiritual, intellectual, and socialization, and emotional.

Tura explained that Brookdale is program based and emphasized the importance of each different type of program.  The residents go on outings with staff in the community and do things in Ithaca like shop and eat at restaurants.  

“We all like to be social in our own personal worlds. And it’s important to bring that to our residents,” Tura said. “They go to the movies, the Johnson Art Museum, the Hangar Theatre out to breakfast, out to lunch, the local restaurants. Ithaca has been wonderful to our residents and our staff when they go out to eat.” 

The different communities at Brookdale give their staff the ability to focus on each resident and their specific needs.

“We’re a very person-centered program and we do person centered care,” Tura said. “The nursing staff, the care, the CO clinical team is just a great team to work with.” 

Tura said how Brookdale is not just about their residents, but the families as well. 

“It’s not just our residents with dementia that we take care of,” Tura said. “It’s their loved ones too. We become a family for everybody. We are their support people.”

Tura has worked at Brookdale for the past 20 years and has recently been promoted as the Associate Executive Director for the campus’s newest community, Crossroads. 

Crossroads offers assistance for residents in their early onset stage of cognitive impairment.

“And then as they advance in their dementia, they would be able to go on to the memory care community,” Tura said. “It’s a continuum of care, which is great having it all on one campus.”

There aren’t other communities in Ithaca that offer this bridge between periods in residents’ lives. 

Brookdale is partnered with Ithaca College, Cornell University, and Ithaca High School to offer different opportunities for students that are interested in careers related to caregiving. 

There is a program for high school students called the New Vision Program.

“It’s for high school seniors who want to be in the medical field but aren’t sure where they want to go in their journey,” Tura said. “They go into a rotation throughout the medical field in the community, and they come to Brookdale.”

These partnerships give more opportunities for residents in Brookdale besides basic needs being met. 

Clare Bridge and the other communities at Brookdale offer person centered approaches and opportunities for residents to receive the care they need and deserve.

“I’m just very proud of ourselves and proud of what we provide for folks in our community,” Tura said.