Deciding to move a loved one into a memory care community can be extraordinarily hard for many families. Deep emotions often surface when researching for the best and most compassionate care outside one’s home. Fortunately, Rhoda Goldman Plaza’s program called The Terrace, is highly respected in the medical community, where privacy, community, and enriching programming is ideally balanced and brings great comfort to families. Our dedicated, staff – trained specifically to work with people in cognitive decline – honor the resident’s dignity and individuality with kindness and sensitivity.
How did we earn our stellar reputation?
Every family’s experience is unique, but we find that residents respond very well to the caregiving and programming routines through which we guide them. Every day, The Terrace’s therapeutic programming provides group activities directed by a licensed MFT and designed to stimulate each major area of functioning: physical, cognitive, artistic/creative, and sensory. We also provide a safe place for emotional expression in a supportive environment where residents can engage and succeed in activities they enjoy.
While the routine and structure of therapeutic programming is comforting to residents with memory loss, it is also flexible so that any activity can be adapted to whatever a resident may need at a particular moment of the day.
How much personal care can we expect for our loved one?
There is no set industry mandate in the State of California for staff-to-resident care that must be met, but we pride ourselves in regularly staffing high, so high that we have more staff then residents as the norm. In fact, our staff-to-resident ratio is unparalled in the industry and driven not by profit margins, but by the higher ideals of our not-for-profit values.
And because our staff turnover is extremely low, our memory care residents are escorted throughout the day to meals and activities by staff who really know them and their special needs and interests.
In the entire community our Rhoda Goldman Plaza staff includes a Registered Nurse, Licensed Vocational Nurses, Certified Nursing Assistants, Med Techs and a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist. There are three, eight-hour shifts with staffing being higher during the day than the evening. Care staff on The Terrace receive specialized training to work with people with memory loss. They only work on The Terrace so that residents are comforted and cared for by the same staff.
Knowing that our resident’s individual identity is acknowledged and nurtured is perhaps one of the most comforting features of our program for adult children and families. It’s important that we earn the respect of our residents, their families and the medical community daily and that we do our best to always live up to our promise that truly, “Here, you’re like family.”