Concerning Christianity

Recently, several members of our triangle area franchise offices traveled to Baltimore for the unveiling of Home Instead Senior Care’s much anticipated new training program for Alzheimer’s and Other Dementias. I have always marveled at the way our home office approaches things. While it would have been easy to simply run out some revamped version of Alzheimer’s training that already exists and claim it as our own, the folks at our home office dug deeper. Not content to settle for what everyone else was doing, Home Instead listened to what families were telling us that they needed. They researched the problem. Home Instead then collaborated with the top experts in the field of Alzheimer’s and other dementias such as:

• Jane Potter, M.D. Home Instead Center for Successful Aging at the University of Nebraska Medical Center
• Thomas Magnuson, M.D. Home Instead Center for Successful Aging at the University of Nebraska Medical Center
• Brenda Keller, M.D. Home Instead Center for Successful Aging at the University of Nebraska Medical Center
• Eric Rodriguez, M.D. University of Pittsburgh Medical Center
• Glen Smith, Neuropsychologist, Mayo Clinic
• Amy D’Aprix, MSW, PhD, President, Dr. Amy, Inc.
• Robert G. Stein President and CEO American Society on Aging
• David Troxel, Author of “A Dignified Life: The Best Friends Approach to Alzheimer’s Care”
• Tanya Marie Richmond, MSW, CRCC, LCSW C.A.R.E.S., UNC Chapel Hill School of Social Work

Working with this impressive panel of top experts in the field of aging and Alzheimer’s, Home Instead developed an innovative new approach towards dealing with this horrible disease.There is a great deal of material currently in existence regarding Alzheimer’s. Unfortunately, most of what exists deals with helping people understand how the disease works. That knowledge is certainly important but Home Instead sought a more pragmatic approach. We sought to give families the tools they needed to face Alzheimer’s, not just understand how it worked

The families that we spoke to highlighted three basic priorities when it came to dealing with their loved ones: keeping them safe at home, managing difficult behaviors and maintaining their dignity. This new training initiative tackles those issues head on.

One of the things that most impressed me was that this training is not designed to simply be something we administer to our CAREGivers. It is specifically designed to be shared with families.

Kudos to the powers that be at our home office for continually raising the bar when it comes to senior care. We are leaders in the industry as a result of your work and forethought.

We are currently in the selection process for the first batch of CAREGivers to go through this training in December with the first family training slotted to take place in mid-January.