andi12502

We are a rehab center under nursing home option in New York and tend to celebrate ourselves as a therapeutic community rather than a traditional nursing home. For instance we have a store, cafe, post office, and each unit is called Neighborhood with residents called Neighbors. Our Resident Council has come up with names for each Neighborhood instead of the medical names they are currently called. You could celebrate your community in many ways incuding ethnic and cultural differences.

Every 13 weeks we do a huge event centered around a theme. Two years a go we had large planters that had held plants in the past and had some dirt still in them. In order to have our residents in wheelchairs enjoy gardening we put them outside on our patio and solicitd donations from local businesses for dirt and plants. Our residents planned and then planted for a week with additional craft activities and spring music concert. At the end of the week they celebrated spring or Earth day with a huge party on Friday complete with refreshments and music. This year they are so excited about the handicapped accessible garden that they will be selling the herbs and vegetables at a farm stand. This is also a great vocational opportunity for them on an ongoing basis.

We gave a call to a music organization called "Musicians on Call" they link hospitals and nursing homes to local musicians in urban areas and have several organizations around the country. The musicians linked with them do bed side concerts and travel room to room visiting residents or patients one by one. Many of those associated with this organization are major music artists. However if you are outside their sphere of influence they will send you a comprehensive package of cds and music dvds upto about a 100 that residents can borrow off a carrt as well as 3 personal cd players with batteries. They tailored our package to our very yound population and many of our residents borrow cds on an ongoing basis as a music library.

I am currently an AD with a population of 280 residents that span the ages from 18 thru 90 years old. We have to run the full gambit from standard senior activities to very innovative programs requiring Video Games as part of our therapy. We found over the past couple of years that the residents stated needs of their own recreation. We had to add younger age based programming that lasted up until 10 pm expecially on the weekends and added program times later morning and early afternoon for the older population. I believe we started out with programs running from 9-5 but found it was not enough. The brain injured population that tends to have a lot of behaviors when their needs are not met immediately required programs that were varied and offered options that were almosts identical if not the same that they had been engaging in when they were at home in the community. These included video games, our own mini version of block buster video, very active sports programs and fully functional weight room. Also needed were several programs using vocational opportunities (restuarant style cafe, bookmaking, post office, store, etc) that fulfilled the needs of those in the population that stated their need for a purposeful job that they could do. Weekend activities were expanded but became more individual based requiring less staff to run programming. IE The Clubhouse was used with many different activities in one room needing only one staff and large group activities became standard including the Coffee socials. For families to better enjoy their time with the residents we instituted special events like concerts that only require a music group who is coming in and two staff members to run it to set up, transport residents, monitor the event, and breakdown for the next program. Sorry for the long response but in short the residents determine the programming so that it is person centered and not a more institutionalized recreation program. But your job can never take presidence over your family. Staff schedules are run to accomodate these events including staff staying late one night to run and the Activity Director planning and monitoring the large events. Your staff needs to be able to do these events as well as you can. If you have no other staff or not sufficient to allow this maximize your residents' ability to enjoy themselves with self-directed recreation and independently run groups. IE have a resident who is capable run a bingo game and keep board games etc on the specific floors so that residents have easy access to these. This should free up some of your nights. Have a talk with HR or your administrator to figure out any changes you need to make in this hectic schedule. Good luck!