Recap of the WHMC Summer Workshop 2012 – It’s all about Teamwork

For the past two days, we’ve been hosting our Summer Workshop series here at Welcome Home.  Team members from each of our communities have been hear learning and sharing about a variety of topics.

As managers, from top to bottom, can feel like your on your own, trying to figure things out.  Twice per year, we bring in our management teams to have an opportunity to network with other communities and share best practices.  The key part in all of this is that we function as a team, and no one is ever alone.

We really have a wonderful team put together here at Welcome Home.  We have very talented people who really care about the residents and staff who work and live in our communities.  These sessions serve as an opportunity for them to make their communities a great place to call home.

We had many breakout discussions for each department…

 

We had a few general sessions for everyone…

 

 

 

 

And the outside speakers this year were fantastic!

 

 

At each of our summer workshops, we believe in hosting a team building event to draw each team closer.  This year it was an amazing race type of event.  Our group shot below was shot along the Crow River in Hutchinson.

 

 

 

As with each conference, it keeps getting better and better.

A giant thank you to all of our speakers!  We heard many great comments about how wonderful each of you were.

And finally thank you to all of the staff at Welcome Home for helping us put on another fantastic conference and workshop for our team members.

Roman Bloemke, Director of Operations/WHMC

Ground breaking ceremony held at Twin Town Villa

On Wednesday, July 25th, Twin Town Villa held their ground breaking ceremony for their new expansion project.

 

Several community members attended the event.  It was fun to see everyone get excited about what the project is going to bring to Breckenridge.

 

We had the official ground breaking ceremony.

 

We even had some residents and staff come outside to participate.  From the look on their faces, they seemed to be extremely excited for what’s to come.The equipment is all lined up and ready to start moving ground.

As we mentioned in yesterday’s blog post, this is a $3.5 million dollar expansion to Twin Town Villa and will bring additional assisted living apartments and a memory care community.

We expect to hire an additional 12-15 new positions to work in the community.  Over time, we expect that additional positions could be added based on level of care needed.

Welcome Home operates 7 senior living communities in Minnesota and Wisconsin. We’ve been providing a warm, homelike atmosphere for resident to call home since 1994 in many different states. Our goal is to focus on the individual residents needs. Over the past several years, we’ve seen and heard from residents and family members to add more service options. By adding these programs to our community, it gives older adults more options for their care and life experiences.

As we age, we want to live in a place that is fun, eat great food, and have our needs cared for.  We believe that adding this community, with the additional common areas such as the movie theater, additional apartments and care programs, gives our residents and their families what they’ve been looking for.

For more information about Twin Town Villa or Welcome Home Management, please visit our website at www.wtohdevelopment.com.  You can get an “inside look” in to the daily lives of our residents by visiting all of our communities Facebook pages.  A link to those can be found on our website as well.

 

Twin Town Villa to expand

Welcome Home Management is excited to announce an expansion project to Twin Town Villa in Breckenridge, Minnesota.

Today at 12pm, we will be hosting a ground breaking ceremony at the community.
This $3.5 million dollar expansion will include an expansion of the assisted living program and an addition of a memory care community. The expansion will roughly add 38,000 square feet to the community.

In addition to the added apartments and programs, we made sure to add additional common spaces in to the community such as a movie theatre, fitness center, computer rooms and additional common spaces. This will give residents more things to do, and be able to expand our community life programs.

This expansion gives our team members the ability to meet our residents needs both now and in to the future.

For more information about Twin Town Villa, visit them on the web at wtohdevelopment.com

Meeting of the Minds Dementia Conference 2012

This weekend, Welcome Home and some of our community representatives will be attending the Meeting of the Minds conference from the MN/Dakota Alzheimer’s Association in St. Paul.

We are proud to be one of the sponsors for this year’s event!

The Meeting of the Minds Dementia conference is the premier conference for persons with dementia, families, friends and professionals. The Alzheimer’s Association and Mayo Clinic invite you to join us for this day of inspiration and information.

Team members from Thomas Landing, Legends at Heritage Place, River Pointe and Twin Town Villa, will be attending sessions at this year’s conference as well as attending our booth in the exhibit hall.  Be sure to stop by and say hello!

If you would like more information on this event or would like to register, simply click on the link: 
http://www.regonline.com/builder/site/Default.aspx?EventID=952142
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2011 Welcome Home Award Winners

Each year, Welcome Home gives out several awards for excellence in our senior living communities.  Awards for Resident Choice, Employee Choice, Best Community Award, and the North Star Leadership Award were given to communities and individuals who qualified for the awards.

Our teams did such great work in their communities and they need to be honored for doing great things.  All communities really did some amazing things this year, but a few stood out.

The Employee Choice Award is given to the community who scores the highest in employee satisfaction.  Our employee satisfaction surveys are done once per year with our team members.  This year’s award winner, with a score of 90% was River Pointe of Moorhead.

The Resident Choice is the award for the highest resident satisfaction scores among all of the communities.  This year’s totals were really close which shows what a great job all of the communities are doing.

This year’s award went to Potter Ridge with a score of 92%!  This is the 4th time that Potter Ridge has won this award.

The next awards presented were the Best Community Award.  This award goes to the communities that showed excellence in 10 separate categories ranging from overall occupancy, adherence to budgets, resident satisfaction and employee satisfaction survey’s.  Communities must attain a high level in all categories to receive the award.

This year’s recipients included the teams at Potter Ridge Assisted Living (3 time recipient),

Twin Town Villa (3 time recipient),

Orchard Hill (2 time recipient) and,

Excelsior Place (1st time recipient).

Our final award is the North Star Leadership Award.  This award exemplifies those individuals who work in Welcome Home communities for the work that they do with the residents and with their team members.  This award recognizes those team members in our communities who show great leadership qualities.  This award is open to any team member at a property managed by Welcome Home.  Anyone can nominate, from family, to team members, to residents.

This year, we again had fantastic nominees.

Our nominees were (l to r), Blaire Swinarski and Mickie Shutz of Potter Ridge Assisted Living; Judi Durkin and Sharon Humble from Twin Town Villa, and Sherri Schnacki of Thomas Landing.  Dean Bloemke, President of Welcome Home announced the nominations through our YouTube channel.

The 2011 North Star Leadership Award went to Judi Durkin, the Lead Care Manager at Twin Town Villa.

Congratulations to all the recipients of this year’s awards!

Go Red!

Residents and staff at Twin Town Villa Assisted Living pose on the grand staircase.  They wore “red” for Go Red for Women on Friday Feb. 3 2012.

North Star Leadership Award Nominee #3

This week, we are honoring team members who were nominated for our North Star Leadership Award.  We are also submitting those who were nominated to Aging Services Stars Among Us campaign.

As we continue to honor those individuals who were nominated for Welcome Home Management’s North Star Leadership Award, and who were submitted to the Stars Among Us campaign at Aging Services, we come to our third nominee.

Our third nomination and Star Among Us is Sharon.  She is a care provider at Twin Town Villa Senior Living in Breckenridge, Minnesota.  This is her first nomination for the North Star Leadership Award.

Sharon was nominated by a resident of Twin Town Villa.  She writes:

“I nominate Sharon H. for her duties and presence.  She goes way beyond getting her work done and in my eyes, you never see her idle.

She is always friendly and very helpful – always with a smile!”

Inspire - What inspires you to serve older adults? Is there a mentor or fellow caregiver who motivates or helps you? What keeps you going on tough days?

“Their sincere appreciation for whatever you do for them.  The compliments you receive for doing your best when caring for them and assisting however you can at the time.”

The people who help motivate me is the compassionate nurse to learn from in how to care for our residents.”

“What keeps me going is the smiles and greetings as you meeting in the hall and being asked “How are you today?” from the residents.  The fact that they really care about you when you answer is the best.”

Serve - What does a career serving older adults mean to you? What is the most meaningful or rewarding part of your job? The most challenging?

“It means so much to be around people that I can learn as much from, as they have a lifetime of living experience.”
“The most rewarding part is knowing what I do for them on a daily basis makes a difference in their life, even if it just makes them smile or laugh.”

Advocate - What do you advocate for? What do you want public policy makers to know about the work you do?

“I advocate for older adults to be treated with dignity and respect, regardless of their health or disability.”

“I want our public policy makers to know that the work I do as a care provider makes their quality of life much better, especially for the resident’s who call our community home!”

Sharon has been doing an outstanding job since she came on board four years ago.  All of us at Twin Town Villa and at Welcome Home congratulate her on her nomination.

For the past three years, Welcome Home has honored an individual that shows leadership  abilities in their community or in the organization with the North Star Leadership Award.  The North Star Leadership Award winner will be announced at Welcome Home’s Annual Winter Conference on February 23rd.  Watch for more details on our live presentation as our conference date approaches.

Roman Bloemke, Director of Operations

North Star Leadership Award nominee #2

As we mentioned earlier this week, we are honoring team members who were nominated for our North Star Leadership Award.  We are also submitting those who were nominated to Aging Services Stars Among Us campaign.

For the past three years, Welcome Home has honored an individual that shows leadership  abilities in their community or in the organization with the North Star Leadership Award.  With Aging Services of Minnesota’s program, we thought it would be a great opportunity to showcase not only our North Star Leadership award winner, but to all of those team members who were nominated throughout our company.

As we continue to honor those individuals who were nominated for Welcome Home Management’s North Star Leadership Award, and who were submitted to the Stars Among Us campaign at Aging Services, we come to our second nominee

Our second nomination and Star Among Us is Judi.  Judi is a shift leader at Twin Town Villa Senior Living in Breckenridge, Minnesota.  This is her second nomination for the North Star Leadership Award.

This year, Judi was nominated by residents, families, and the people she works with on a daily basis.  Last year, one of  Twin Town Villa’s advisory board members wrote,

“I see and hear firsthand about the excellent work that Judy does for the residents. She genuinely cares about the quality of life for the residents here at the Villa.  Judy has a great sense of humor which brightens  my father’s long days.  She is very understanding of his limitations due to his cancer and the medications side effects that he experiences.  She always greets him with a warm and cheerful smile and kind words.  It’s employees like her that make family members feel secure that their loved ones are being properly cared for.”

Inspire - What inspires you to serve older adults? Is there a mentor or fellow caregiver who motivates or helps you? What keeps you going on tough days?

“Knowing that I am helping individuals that are deserving of being taken care of is what inspires me.  It makes me feel good at the end of the day knowing that I helped them.”

My Director, Lisa Lehmann, and my RN, Tanya Ramacher are my mentors.  They are both very proactive when it comes to the cares and services that our residents need each and every day.”

“The resident’s are what keeps me going on the tough days.  Knowing that they appreciate everything that we do for them on a daily basis – it just keeps me going.”

Serve - What does a career serving older adults mean to you? What is the most meaningful or rewarding part of your job? The most challenging?

“Knowing that I am able to give back to the older adults after everything that they have done for us when we were the ones that needed to be taken care of.”

The most meaningful part of my job is getting to see each of the residents every day and seeing their smiles on Monday mornings after the weekend.”

Advocate - What do you advocate for? What do you want public policy makers to know about the work you do?

“I want our public policy makers to understand that giving individuals the opportunities to continue to live on their own, without having to in to the nursing home unless it is absolutely necessary, is extremely important to one’s self-esteem.”

Judi does an outstanding job for Twin Town Villa and Welcome Home Health Care.  She always has a big smile on her face every time I see her.  Congratulations Judi!

The North Star Leadership Award winner will be announced at Welcome Home’s Annual Winter Conference on February 23rd.  Watch for more details on our live presentation as our conference date approaches

Roman Bloemke, Director of Operations

Adding to our social network

For the past three years, we have been looking at the best outlets for our message and ways for families to see what Mom and Dad or Grandpa and Grandma are doing on a daily basis.

We first dipped our toes in the social media landscape by developing our Facebook page.  You can also find our community’s Facebook pages from our website.

Shortly thereafter, we started this blog.

• In the past year, we’ve moved towards building our space on YouTube.
• For those of you who are on Google+, we are have just opened our page there as well.
• We are also over on Twitter.  You can find us at @welcomehomemgmt
• If you are of the LinkedIn crowd, you can find us here.

In the next year, look for all of our social media channels to increase activity.  Our goal is to give you relevant information that affect our residents and their families.  We also want to show you pictures and stories about our communities and what is help shape them in to such great places.  We also want to share with you video of events and of our residents and what they are involved in.

We think of these places as our daily newsletters to you, our friends and family.

Come along on our journey as we move forward this year.  It’s already looking to be a great one!

Roman Bloemke, Director of Operations

Thanks and Gratitude

The years seem to fly by so quickly sometimes.  It seems like we just wrote our annual Thanksgiving post here on the blog.

Roman Bloemke, Welcome Home Management

This post for me comes really easy every year, because we have so much to be thankful for.  When you work with caring and compassionate people, it just makes coming to work that much more enjoyable.  As many of our residents will tell you, they are all just wonderful – and I agree!

I’m thankful for the care providers who take the best care of our residents.  I’m thankful for the dining services people who prepare the wonderful food we get to eat.  I’m thankful for the Community Life Coordinators who make the community fun and exciting.  I’m thankful for the Maintenance staff who work to keep things looking nice and operating well.  I’m thankful for the marketing people who are there to help families work through what can be a difficult transition.  I’m thankful for the Nurses who are the most compassionate people I know.  I am thankful for the Memory Care Coordinators who hold a special place in so many people’s hearts.  I’m thankful for the Director’s of Resident Services who do such an amazing job.  And I’m thankful for our office team who work behind the scenes to support the communities.

All of you are just like a family to us.

Finally, I’m thankful for my wife and my two boys who have always been supportive in both my career and my personal life.

As you’ll read below, our team members contributed to our annual post.  Thank you for considering Welcome Home and our properties for your loved ones.  From all of our family to yours, we wish you a happy Thanksgiving.