Creating a diner to remember
Renovation at memory care facility helps residents feel at home.
Positively Saratoga
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Staff at the Home of the Good Shepherd’s Memory Care center cut the ribbon on a brand new — but old — diner today. The “Rockin’ Diner” is actually a room inside their building tricked out to look like a 50s-era diner with a working jukebox, pictures of crooners on the wall and the colors and feel of a diner.
“[The room] was previously just used as, like a coffee [or] tea room, like a little breakfast nook, and we kind of wanted to bring an element where they're able to reminisce on that old style diner,” said Kristen Cashman, the building administrator for the complex. The facility serves mostly older individual who are living with Alzheimer’s or other cognitive issues that affect memory and health. They live in the facility and are cared for by nurses and healthcare providers.
“The musical aspects with dementia residents is so important. So I'm glad we were kind of able to combine the best of both worlds for them, honestly,” Cashman said.
The marketing director Kate Smith agreed.
“Music is very therapeutic, and obviously that can help evoke memory,” she said.
“And then it's a gathering place, a place for families to come,” Smith said. The way that music can trigger a memory “can be a conversation starter, if you need something to help get people talking.”
Smith said the facility has other locations, such as a park bench near trees, to evoke memories or spur discussion in the same way, but the diner is the newest.
The home’s CEO is Denise Cote who was very happy with the way the $50,000 upgrade turned out.
“The residents, when they remember something really good, they're really content,” she said. They hear familiar music and know the dance steps. It offers the feeling to the residents that they are out and about, that life is normal. They feel like they’re “in touch with community, and that's really important for people to feel that, you know?”
Cote gave credit to the administrator Kristen Cashman.
“I just told the administrator here, Kristen, how great the residence was. The care staff is so attentive. This is just a really nice community here.”
For Craig Kohler, owner of Empire Exhibits and Displays, this was not the first job he has completed with the Home of the Good Shepherd. He said he has worked on murals throughout the hallways and other spaces that make the facility more like home.
He said he had fun choosing songs and installing the digital jukebox and microphone. A mirror hangs just above the jukebox so people can sing along with the song and watch themselves at the same time.
“It's really just always fun working with the color palette of the 50s and [the] checkerboard” design, he said.
Among the people in attendance for the ribbon cutting were Saratoga County Chamber of Commerce President Todd Shimkus, Saratoga Springs Mayor John Safford, New York State Senator Jim Tedisco, a Republican from the senate’s 44th district, and Assemblywoman Carrie Woerner, a Democrat in the Assembly’s 113th district. Both districts cover Saratoga Springs.
Woerner, in a purple blouse, brought purple flowers.
“I brought you a house plant,” Woerner said, handing the plant to the head of food service for the facility, Kelly Zimmerman, herself done up 50s-style with a pink poodle skirt and matching pink scarf and cat-eye glasses.
“Purple is the color for Alzheimer’s,” Woerner said to the collected staff of the facility, adding that the plant is meant “to commemorate and remember the challenges that Alzheimer's presents, and the need to continue to invest in facilities like yours that provide for the care of people with Alzheimer's.”
The Home of the Good Shepherd has assisted living facilities in Saratoga Springs, Milton, Moreau and Wilton. Malta and Saratoga Springs also have memory care facilities.
Sidebar: Kelly Zimmerman, the head of food service for the Home of the Good Shepherd, said she had roller skates in her car to finish the 50s-poodle-skirt ensemble, but admitted she never was a roller-skating car hop waitress. However, she said at an unveiling of a similar space at the Home’s Malta location, she and her daughter donned the skates and delivered ice cream sodas to the residents.
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