Here at The Kensington, we encourage continuous development of self and community. In every decision and action, we always live by OUR PROMISE. I am truly grateful to Kensington Senior Living Partners and to our Executive Director, Cc DeGraff, for their continued support to our team and their unwavering commitment to providing excellent care.
The Kensington Sierra Madre is an adopter of dementia care expert Teepa Snow’s Positive Approach ® to Care (PAC), which strives to connect better with people living with dementia. I am honored to have met Teepa Snow and her mentor team in Phoenix, Arizona on February 17 to 19 for Positive Approach ® to Care Coach Certification 3-day training. Education and learning has always been a primary focus of my social and intellectual pursuits. I truly thrive when my work is directed towards constructive, meaningful goals with humanistic consequences. It was an inspiring three days to be in a room filled with very different yet like-minded people, all dedicated to helping those living with dementia and the ones who love them. I am fortunate to be a part of The Kensington Sierra Madre team because I have seen first-hand some of what Teepa Snow taught us in our training.
At Kensington Sierra Madre, our person-centered approach evolves to meet unique needs of person living with various forms of dementia using effective and structure technique and the focus is on what skills remain, rather than what is lost. The coach certification training provided me additional techniques on how to better support our care managers to appreciate and to accept that the person living with dementia is unable to change but we can be flexible in our approach to make care giving easier by matching the approach with the specific needs of our residents. It is paramount to helping the team feel they can succeed and are supported by continuously providing feedback to our team and help focus on “what went well”, and discussing “things we would do differently” next time and become more motivated to try. Encouraging our care team to allow their interaction to be much more adaptable and person focused – respecting boundaries and creating connections. Recognizing the person living with dementia is doing the best they can, and we should respond by changing our approach to promote better quality of life.
Becoming a PAC Certified Independent Coach helped me gain better understanding and achieve more skills and use them to take our care team to the next level – transforming current care giving practices into a more positive dementia care culture which is essential to improve the quality of life for the person living with dementia and filing the day with meaning.
I look forward to continuing to apply these skills here at our community and to also be an inspiration to others.
Marjorie Villarosa and Teepa Snow