2012 Award Winners Announced

Each year we bring our team leaders to Hutchinson for an educational conference.  During our winter conference, we announce those who won awards during the previous year.

Last night, we announced the winners of the 2012 awards.

 

*Pictured above, L to R: Dean Bloemke, President and Roman Bloemke, Director of Operations

Our first award announced was for the Resident Choice Award.  This award goes to the community who achieved the highest score during our annual resident satisfaction surveys.  The 2012 Resident Choice award was given to Excelsior Place Assisted Living in Baxter, Minnesota.

As their Director of Resident Services, Loree Besser, accepted the award, she gave all of the credit to her team.  ”This year, like many, presents each of us with challenges.  All of the credit for this award goes to my team back at Excelsior Place.  Without a solid foundation, you have nothing.  The team that I work with is absolutely phenomenal and we couldn’t have done this without them.”

Our next award presented last night was the Great Places to Work award.  This award is presented to the communities who achieve a high satisfaction level.  This year’s award winner was River Pointe of Moorhead.

While accepting the award, Ron Bervig, Director of Resident Services gave credit to the team in place at River Pointe, commending them on doing a great job.  ”I really have to thank the staff for the wonderful job they do every day.  They are what makes us successful!”

Our next award goes to communities who have reached a list of achievements and have a high level of excellence in senior living. Criteria for the award include employment best practices and employee satisfaction, resident and family satisfaction, resident and staff safety, financial performance, matching resident needs to care plans throughout a resident’s stay, and overall occupancy.  Each of the performance objectives is to assure the proper and desired level of service is provided.

The 2012 Best Community Awards go to:

Orchard Hill Assisted Living – New Ulm, Minnesota.

Potter Ridge Assisted Living – Red Wing, Minnesota.

Excelsior Place Assisted Living – Baxter, Minnesota

River Pointe of Moorhead – Moorhead, Minnesota

Our final award of the night was the North Star Leadership Award.  This award goes to the person who was nominated by their peers and residents who live in the community.

The 2012 North Star Leadership Award goes to Paulla Perry from Thomas Landing Senior Living, in Rice Lake, Wisconsin.

Paulla was unaware that she had been nominated, so the surprise on her face was great to see when it was announced that she had won.  Paulla thanked each of her peers and the resident’s back at Thomas Landing for making her job a joy to be a part of.  ”I’m at a loss as to what to say.  I need to say thank you to everyone at Thomas Landing for being such a great team to work with.  It’s because of them that it is a joy to go to work everyday.”

Congratulations to all of our award winners!

You continue to inspire us and others to do great work. Thank you for everything you do!

Pinewood Derby–Baxter vs. Pillager at Excelsior Place

This week, Excelsior Place Assisted Living in Baxter, welcomed the Cub Scout Packs from Baxter and Pillager in for their derby car races.

Scouts from both cities came to for a day to see who had the fastest wheels between the two cities.

I’ve always thought that this would be fun for the residents to see in the community, especially for the guys.

Thank you to the Cub Scouts for coming out and showing off you cars!

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!

Senior Olympics at Excelsior Place prove you’re never too old to play!

We started talking about 3 months ago on how we could get our residents moving more through out the winter months and have tons of fun doing it.  I brought the idea to the Supervisor’s meeting and we discussed what activities

to have that the residents could identify with and most likely participated in when they were raising their families.  It was important to get all staff involved as well because the participation of residents is much greater.  This past week was our initial kick off and let me tell you everyone was having fun.  You could hear hooting, howling and laughter through out the building.  The residents really jumped on board and could not wait until the next day to see what sport they would get to play.  Our staff did a great job in getting everyone excited too.  On Monday, Deb our Food Service Director and her staff started with the game of horseshoes which several residents remembered playing and wondered if they could still throw a good “shoe”.  Tuesday brought us to a new game which residents were not familiar with, bocce ball.  Julie, our Community Life Coordinator hosted this event and  bocce is sure to be a hit.  Then on Wednesday, Jane our registered nurse and her team of care providers brought out an old familiar game of bowling.  Many of our resident remember bowling on teams and the old time bowling alleys–it was very affordable in their day.  As expected our residents were still going strong on Thursday.  Bill our Maintenance Director brought the great game of bean bag toss.  Let me tell you–there were many residents that came and were cheering each other on.  I can not remember how many bean bags actually went through the board hole but from the sounds of congratulations the number must have been high.  Lastly, came Friday and it was time to head to the beach–yes you can go to the beach inMinnesotain January.  Loree led the anxious beach goers to a wild game of beach volley ball–we adapted the rules a bit–you could either hit or throw the beach ball over the net or kick it under the net.

In all of the Senior Olympic activities this past week, our residents were definitely up for the challenge.  They received lots of movement in their arms, hands, legs, feet which will help all of them continue to stay active.  They also, gained strength and outlook on life as they cheered, laughed and can hardly wait until next week.  In fact, at dinner one of our residents, Winnie stated, “ I am too tired to eat but boy I sure did have fun”.  Another resident, Virginia stated, “ good times this week, I enjoyed the variety of activity”.

Marilyn liked the challenges of the many games and she participated all week.  She also asked today, are we going to get to play beach volley ball again?  Lois who loves to participate in many things said “it is a good get together with everyone.

We will continue our Senior Olympics through April and then most likely go into a walking program and other outdoor activities.  Our hopes are that these activities will have an impact on the residents balance, strength, gait and  reduce the risk of falling.  The positive impact and laughter that this last week has brought to our community is awesome.  Always remember, you are never to old to play!!!

Welcome Home honors North Star Leadership nominees by submitting them to Aging Services of Minnesota’s Stars Among Us campaign.

Next week, Aging Services of Minnesota will be showcasing people who work in the senior living industry at their annual Institute.  The goal of their program, called “Stars Among Us”, is ”to shine a light on the people who are the backbone of our support system for seniors in Minnesota.”

The campaign is their effort to share as many stories of individual caregivers and aging services professionals.  Officially launching on February 8th, they will create an online gallery to showcase the stars.  They will also be sharing them on their social media channels and lawmakers.

Here is a link directly to the Stars Among Us campaign page if you’d like to submit someone: http://www.agingservicesinstitute.org/starsamongus.asp

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.

Over the next few days, we will 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.

Home for the Holidays

By Todd Corrow, Marketing Associate at Legends at Heritage Place and Lisa Lehmann, Director of Resident Services at Twin Town Villa.

As families gather together during this upcoming Holiday Season, some may face seeing changes in their parents.  Our goal is to assist all families with these difficult decisions.  We have started a support group for all families in which the topics cover how to make the best decisions for everyone involved.  When a family comes to us looking to take that next step, we sit down with all of them and take the time for them to communicate exactly what they are looking for and what concerns they have.  We assist the families with finding the solution that works best for them.

Another area that we emphasize is that even if Mom and Dad come to live with us, it doesn’t have to mean that Mom and Dad can’t host the family get together.  This Thanksgiving we are working with several of our residents to bring their family to the community for their traditional family gathering.  We know this will mean the world to not only the residents, but to all of us here.  We will have an opportunity to visit with the family and all our residents will have the opportunity to share in the joy of family.

We as a staff strive to allow the families to become just that – a family again, with the caregiver role becoming ours.  This way the spouse can again become the husband or wife without the stress of taking care of the other, we want them to regain the smiles and relaxing times that we all cherish.  We want the sons and daughters to be able to bring the grandchildren in and have the smiles brighten up the entire building.  Smiles and laughter truly possess a healing power and create a warm and positive environment.

Coming home for the holiday’s can sometimes be an eye opener when you come home to an elderly parent(s).  Sometimes it is amazing what declines we see this month that we didn’t notice six months ago when we were home last.

Things you might notice or signs that you should keep an eye out for –

•  Your parent seems depressed. Depression is common in seniors who are isolated and alone.
• Dad is reaching for the backs of the furniture while getting around the house, leads us to believe that he is losses his balance more often, making it more difficult to get around.
• You notice frequent bruises, although your parent may try to cover them up. This may be a sign of falling or mobility and balance problems.
• Your parent wears the same clothes over and over again or neglects personal hygiene. This can indicate that doing laundry and bathing is physically challenging.
• Did you notice that mom isn’t wearing any of her favorite blouses?  She is having a hard time buttoning them up.
• Mom seems more confused lately, she maybe having trouble keeping her medications straight.  Mixing up the times and doses can lead to more confusion.
• The house and yard isn’t as clean and tidy as it used to be.
• Your parent forgets things, including doctor’s appointments and when to take medication. This may be due to memory loss.
• You notice strange or inappropriate behavior. For example, your parent may dress inappropriately for the weather. This can be a sign that your parent is experiencing confusion.

So as we gather for the Holidays lets be thankful for the opportunity to come together and create lasting memories.  If you see things that concern you do not fear what the future holds embrace the opportunity to work with a Community which will provide a safe and caring environment where there will be opportunity to create more memories.

Have a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend!

Heart and Soul – LCM Workshop

Today, the heart and soul of the care providers visited Welcome Home for their Fall Workshop.

We covered a variety of topics, but the overall goal was sharing information between all of the communities.  What works, best practices, scheduling ideas, taking inventory, and being a leader in the community.

The overall result was a

Great day of discussion – Community Life Coordinator’s Fall Workshop

What an amazing day filled with ideas and great discussion among a bunch of talented people!

Today, we hosted our Community Life Coordinator’s and the Director’s of Resident Services from our communities.  Quite honestly,

Excelsior Place getting ready to host its annual Fall Open House

Preparing for a future move is very important for older adults.  With winter on the way, many people are considering what their options are.  With that in mind, Excelsior Place Assisted Living community in Baxter, Minnesota will be holding its annual Fall Open House on Tuesday, October 18^th.

Community members, residents, family and friends are invited to attend. If you are just curious and would like a tour, or would like to know more information about assisted living, our team will be on hand to answer your questions.

Our menu will include homemade wild rice soup and chili, bread sticks, dessert and beverages. This will be a wonderful time to meet our residents, staff and to get a chance to experience our beautiful community.

The Fall Open House will be from 3:30-6:30pm.  Excelsior Place Assisted Living is located at 14211 Firewood Drive in Baxter, Minnesota.

To RSVP to the event contact Loree at 218-828-4770.

We look forward to seeing you there!

 

For the love of food

In an older adults life, food plays a vital role.  How it looks, how it tastes, the texture, to how it is perceived.  Every year, we bring our Food Service Director’s together for workshops where we cover topics that are useful to them and their staff in their communities.  These workshops are designed to provide great quality, and a fantastic experience on a daily basis.

Today was our first workshop of the year and we had a great day here in our office.  Along with our food distributor, we welcomed all of the Food Service Director’s along with their Director’s of Resident Services here at Welcome Home for ongoing education.

The room was buzzing as Chef Scott was already preparing food in our training kitchen as our first session began.  Customer service plays such a large role in the overall experience someone gets when they eat food.  From the atmosphere, to the way plates are served and cleared are important.  When we talk about that experience there are four basic needs of our residents: to be understood; to feel welcome; to feel important; and an overall comfortable environment in which to eat.

We spent the next part of the day sampling different varieties of meat, poultry, and fish.  It turned out to be a diet buster for many, but the food was amazing – especially when they brought out the desserts!

The day wrapped up with an excellent presentation on plate garnishing.

We’ve included some pictures below of today’s event.  We want to thank Christine, Terry, and Chef Scott for coming today and for the presentation they gave to our team members.

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