Tricia Medeiros is the Regional Director of The Plaza Assisted Living, overseeing the operations of all The Plaza Assisted Living communities, including The Plaza at Punchbowl and The Plaza at Mililani. The Plaza team provides Independent, Assisted Living, and Memory Support services in Hawaii, helping healthy seniors as well as seniors with dementia live more independent lives. Here, she talks about what you should look for when seeking an assisted living facility for someone you love.
In Hawaii, there are few options for care for people with dementia. It is important for families to tour communities and meet the staff when choosing an assisted living program. Transitioning to a new community can be challenging, but the staff at The Plaza is trained and experienced in handling these transitions.
The most important thing that caregivers need to do when looking for an assisted facility for someone with dementia is to tour the facility. Obviously, you are looking for an attractive environment that is clean, but more importantly, you want to see the interactions between the staff and the residents.
It is the staff that really makes the community a special environment. Those people will be spending a lot of time with your loved one, and you need to make sure that you have complete trust in them, and that you like and appreciate the way they interact with each other, as well as with the other residents.
Specialized Training
The staff at the community should also have specialized training - not only training with elderly people, but also with people with Alzheimer’s and dementia in particular. The facility itself should also be licensed and insured, but that should go without saying.
I would also recommend that families looking for an assisted living facility talk to the other families of residents who are already living there and see what they think. They should ask them about their own experiences and whether they are generally happy with the services provided.
Different Living Options
In our Dementia and Assisted Living Plus floors, we offer our residents semi-private apartments, where each resident has his or her own bedroom, as well as a shared kitchenette and bathroom within the apartment. We also have licensed staff on site 24 hours a day, and only licensed staff pass out medications at our communities.
The Plaza is designed to accommodate moderate income seniors, and once you start requiring nursing services and are paying for those services in your home, you will find that our rental amounts are usually cheaper. And if your loved one gets ill, we will still be able to take care of him or her. That’s because we fully license our buildings - so that we can fully take care of residents at all times and ensure that they are comfortable and safe inside their new homes.
