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For us it depends on what we are going to do. Outings to the mall where we have a place to converge, we usually go at a 1:3 ratio, plus the driver if needed. Also families may meet us there. Picnics and lunch outings usually 1:4 with the driver not included. If we go to walmart or take a trip to the casino we are 1:1, and we gets lots of volunteers for the casino trips.

If you find somewhere please let me know also. We found sitting on the floor and risking injury from flying pins or balls easier than the bend

If you find somewhere please let me know also. We found sitting on the floor and risking injury from flying pins or balls easier than the bend

We play Bingo 4 times per week. Sunday am, Monday PM, Wed PM and Saturday PM. We play for points. Regular bingo is worth one point, cover all game is worth two. At the end of the month the top 3 point earners get 5,4,and 3 dollars respectively. They can use the money on whatever they want typically getting stuff at the general store or in the break room.

I too have problems with low level programming. From what I am reading what some AD's are thinking as Low Level are what we consider moderate to high level here. My low level people are the ones who are in Geri- Chairs and are total care residents. The ones who if they make eye contanct when you call their name its a big deal. They are the ones who we have trouble keeping awake even during our most noisy activities such as rhythm band. I am having issues coming up with activity ideas for these types of residnets.

Our local newspaper prints letters to Santa. Every Year we have an activity where we ask the residents what they would ask Santa for as a child and then read the letters to Santa from the paper. We do not read all the letters and we usually have a good time with it.

We will be holding our annual Thanksgiving Family Dinner on the Saturday before Thanksgiving. We invite each of the residents contact list ( Usually 1-3 are listed as contacts). We dont have a limit on how many family can attend and we don not charge for this meal as it is a pot luck kind of meal. Our dietary dept does turkey, stuffing, mashed taters ( and ham usually) and then the families each bring a covered dish and dessert. We normally have 150-200 people show up.

This has been the first year our Activity Staff has had to work Holidays. Basically the staff is here that day to help with meal time ( feed people). The first Holiday we worked we had 1 person who was able to decide wether to attend the activity or not show up. On the second we had 2 people show up. There were others in the room but they would have been content with just putting a movie that deals with the holiday on the televison. I am not having people work Christmas ( double time) just to help feed.

Believe it or not we had the same issues not so long ago. We play for points and who ever has the highest ammount of points at the end of the month gets 5 dollars, 2nd place is 4 and third place is 3. One day after hearing numerous complaints about cheating, people sitting in someones seat, just petty things I had enough. I went in before the next game and said for the month of June they were only playing for fun. Then before July I made a list of bingo rules and read them to them. Havent had nearly as many issues.

I actually had my admistrator suggest looking into getting the residents a wii. Im in the process of looking for one ( has been budgeted for just hard to get ahold of). The cost of it is 250.00 My hubby will be getting one for christmas as my mom already has bought one for us. I think a lot of the residents here will enjoy it and get exercise without realizing it. There are a lot of games that I think they would enjoy. Brain age is one that I plan on getting them as is the cooking one.

The company that I work for sends out montly satisfaction surverys to different families. We then are required to respond to any low score. There are 2 types of residents that I consitantly get lower scores from: Ones who are there for a re-hab/short stay, or ones that are room bound due to their medical condition and get 1:1 beside visits. The re-hab ones are in therapy most of the morning and are just plumb worn out. We ask them to join in on the activity but usually get told... Im too tired. Then when they go home their family member returns their survey and says that they never attended anything. Does anyone know of a way to let families know that their loved one is recieving 1:1 visits in their room. We have tried calendars on the wall, no one would look at them, I have stopped in the room when I notice family members there. A lot of times it is not a Low Score but a Non/Applicable because they dont realize what we do for the ones who are unable to attend activities. One of my goals for the next three months is to better inform the families about what their family member is participating in. I am now sending out letters to the families when they get their invite to the care confrences but I dont know if this will have any affect it or not.

We used to a group like that and called it "Way Back Wednesday" can you tell what day of the week we held them?

We bowl about once a month here. We normally have between 15 and 20 people bowling at a time. I even started a bowling league last year and we had 5 teams of 4. They bowled every other week for about 4 months. We took the winning team to a local bowling alley that has the handicapped ramp as the treat for the winners.

I have an Aide that happens to be a CNA.

I have a monthly budget of 400 dollars which works out to about 13 cents ppd. But I also do fund raising things on money not in the budget that we use a lot.

Besides activities my week is like this Monday- Friday mini UR meeting/falls committee: 9 am for about 15 mins to 45 mins Tuesday- QI starting at 2 usually an hour and a half, Care plans if we have a lot due that month Thursdays- Care Plans- Starting at 2 and ending usually by 4 depending on how many families are coming 2 Tuesdays a month- Deptartment head, about 2.5 hours in the morning Monthly- Decorate the facility Staff here 7 days a week except holidays. Monday, Wed and Thursday from 730 am until 8pm. Tuesday and Fridays 730 a-5p, weekends 8 a - 430p. 2 of my staff helps with meals 2 times per day.

We play different variations of bingo during are normal bingo days. It may be you need two bingos to win, the kite, upside down V, T etc. We have had a few people say they werent coming to bingo because it was gambling. Then they found out they didnt have to pay to play and started showing up. We play for points and the top three win money at the end of the month. But this month we are playing strictly for fun and socialization because of things that happened over the weekend during bingo. We have very competitive residents and they were actually fighting with each other over where to sit and how many points they have.

We have a 30 bed secure unit. We try to bring as many of the residents as possible off the unit as often as possible. We do provide activities to the residents that remain on unit. One of my main goals when I took over was to get the residents out as much as possible because the staff on the secured unit tends to feel that they are the only ones in the building we are here for. Many of our residents in the secure unit however are in the later stages of the diesease process and dont really need that level of care. However the families are comfortable back there and will not allow a room transfer.

We wear scrubs in the facility I am at. We can wear casual street clothes but they end up ruined. We are the only dept ( other than therapy which is a contracted service) permitted to wear printed tops. The Nurses have to wear plain white or Plain Navy blue. Kitchen is in green, housekeeping is light blue. CNA's are same as nursing. I do however dress up when we have a special event going on like thanksgiving dinner, christmas party etc.

was getting tired of stapling things on walls so very much of the time, but it was sure fun for our residents to see change, now I am not allowed to staple or tape, so the walls are empty, eventually I would like to figure something out to brighten it up, bring out some personality! We are not allowed to tape or staple here either. We use the poster tack ( sticky stuff is what we call it here) to hold up our wall decorations. We also hang a lot of things from the ceilings on fishing line. Right now the residents here are doing a magazine scavenger hunt and the pictures they find will become collages. We then attach the collages to a board that we hang and change monthly or every ohter month. I took over this position about 6 months ago and have realized slowly adding things in seems to be the best way to deal with a stick in the mud administrator. His wife use to be the AD but has since retired and he wants things back to the way they were when she was here. He even made a comment about me holding a Rock and Roll week because the era of our residents is big band music, but when we have bowling they all dance along with the R'n roll so I dont worry about it.

How low functioning are you talking about? Our low functioning residents are basically to the stage that their only responses is limited eye contact and maybe an occasional sound, mumble, etc. What we do with these residents is soft music, lotion to their hands, different scents in the room, sing-a-longs, rhythm band to listen to music they would have sang in childhood. For our middle functioning residents along with the low functioning activities we do easy games like: Beat the dice, horse racing, book club where we read the story and ask questions appropriate to the person, adaptive bowling with lots of encouragement, ring toss, floor toss, etc

At our facility Activities is in charge of getting, reading and sending resident mail. Most of our residents use our monthly shopping trip to get any items they need but if they arent on the list to go and its something small activities will pick it up but only during that trip. Our social worker picks up the other items.

When a resident is on comfort care we normally provide room visits with chicken soup stories/light stories. We also provide soothing music. If the resident is on comfort care but is still able to attend regular activities ( we have had some here like that) we offer the activity to them like any other resident.