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!

Thomas Landing team walks to find an end to Alzheimer’s

What an honor to walk with so many people committed to find and end to Alzheimer’s on Saturday, September 10, 2011.

The walk started at 9:30am on a beautiful, sunny day.  Walkers of all ages helped raise over $31,000.00 from the Rice Lake area. There were many different ways money was raised such as raffle tickets towards vacations and savings bonds, rummage sales and carnivals or just plain asking for a donation. There even was a football raffled off with all the Green Bay Super Bowl Champions signatures on it.

I would like to thank all the staff and family members who participate in the walk. I especially would like to thank Gloria  Widiker, Thomas Landing’s Memory Care Coordinator , for being our team leader to help us get organized and raise our share of the money. One of our residents was at the walk and helped direct traffic so people would know where to register.  Also thank you Vera L.

With support from everyone we can find a way to end Alzheimer’s Disease.

PS: There is still time to donate to the Walk to End Alzheimer’s.  The Legends at Heritage Place team will be participating in their event on September 24th, along Lake George in St. Cloud, MN.  Their donation page can be found along the right hand side of this blog, or by following this link.

Sue Jutz, Director of Resident Services - Thomas Landing

A Walk to End Alzheimer’s

Today, as many as 5.4 million Americans are living with Alzheimer’s. In addition, 10 million baby boomers are aging, increasing their risk for developing this fatal disease. Now is the time to end this epidemic!

But there is something we can do to stop this devastating disease. We can walk together to end this disease. That’s why we are participating in the Alzheimer’s Association Walk to End Alzheimer’s™.

The Alzheimer’s Association^®, the leading voluntary organization in Alzheimer research, care and support, is dedicated to finding prevention methods, treatments and an eventual cure for the disease.

This year, two of our communities are participating in area events.  The Legends at Heritage Place team will be participating in their event on September 24th, along Lake George in St. Cloud, MN.  The Thomas Landing team will participate in the Rice Lake, WI event on September 10th starting at the Moose Lake Lodge.

We know we can do this with your support. Would you please consider making a donation? Visit either communities online fundraising headquarters for Thomas Landing or The Legends at Heritage Place to learn more and make a donation.

Walk to End Alzheimer’s™ “The You Factor”

Thank you in advance for your time, generosity and for supporting our team members as they support this cause.

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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Fighting Ageism in America

ALFA Short Film Competition winner - "Mind the Gap"

We recently returned from the Assisted Living Federation of America conference and there was a common theme we would like to share.

In today’s society, there seems to be a lot of “ageism” out there.  Ageism is defined as discrimination against people on the grounds of age; specifically, discrimination against the elderly.  This year, ALFA held a film competition that could help fight ageism in America.  If you click here, you can watch the short film that won the competition.

Then just yesterday, I came across this awesome story on MSNBC.com of a gentleman, who dreamed at a younger age, of crossing the Atlantic ocean in a raft.  At 85 years old, he set out with three of his friends to build the raft and set sail on the 2,800 mile journey.

Aging Parents: 5 warning signs of health problems

Recently, I had a chance meeting with one of our families outside of the work environment and we got to talking about a variety of things.  One of the points of conversation that was most interesting is the process that families go through when looking for a senior living community for their parent(s).  More times than people realize, decisions to make a move in to an assisted living community are based out of necessity.  We all talk a lot about services and amentities or features of our properties that seperate us from everyone else, but that isn’t what’s really important, and something they probably won’t remember when they get home to make their decision.

As providers, we have to remember that when someone reaches out to our communities, that we take in to consideration all of the emotions that this family member is going through.  Many times, as family members, we go out to visit our parents over the weekend and realize that something isn’t quite right and begin our search/fact finding mission.  This is very difficult time for families.  Imagine for a moment that you are out for a normal visit to your parents and realize that my parents are getting older.  Sometimes it can feel as though it happened overnight.  In those instances, families that are coming to visit us are in an emotional state.  It’s incredibly important to realize the stress they are going through.  They have called your community, or walked in the door to have us help them solutions and answers.

New wheels for the residents of Thomas Landing Senior Living!

Residents taking their first ride moments after the bus arrived.

Last week, we had the great pleasure of delivering a “late” holiday present to the residents of Thomas Landing Senior Living Community in Rice Lake, Wisconsin.

The picture of the smiles on the resident’s faces will be a lasting memory for me.  I talked to each one of them as they boarded for their first ride on the bus and they just couldn’t believe it.  One even mentioned that it seemed like a dream!

The possibilities are endless

Our activity program is called “A Part of You”.  The program is based around things that the residents like to do, not what our staff are accustomed to doing.  By having a bus, this gives the staff the ability to plan a variety of events.  “Everything from a simple run to the grocery store, or to the doctor, or on special excursions, the possibilities are really endless.” states Dean Bloemke, President of Welcome Home Management. 

As we left the community that day, the residents were still beaming, it had us thinking that maybe, this day couldn’t have gotten any better.

Congratulations to the residents and staff at Thomas Landing Senior Living community.  We sure hope you enjoy your new wheels!

Roman Bloemke, Director of Operations at Welcome Home Management