A GRAND OPENING was held Aug. 14 for the Jacobson Memorial Dementia Library located at Elite Care’s Sylvan Park campus in Vancouver. Among the attendees were (pictured, left-to-right) Jan Malone, HOPE President; Maria Cura, Elite Care’s community relations manager; Jason Hess, Elite Care’s CEO; and Patti Jacobson, wife the late Ralph Jacobson, who the library is named after.
THE JACOBSON MEMORIAL DEMENTIA LIBRARY located at Elite Care’s Sylvan Park campus in Vancouver is “a warm, inviting room within our community” to find resources for dementia-related diseases and attend support groups hosted by HOPE.
The first lending library in Southwest Washington dedicated to dementia-related diseases opened on the campus of Elite Care at Sylvan Park in Vancouver on Aug. 14.
Jason Hess, CEO for Elite Care, is humbled to be a part of this endeavor but gives all the credit to community relations manager, Maria Cura.
“The thing for me was the fact that our team member (Maria Cura) was empowered to do this,’’ Hess said. “We talk a lot about empowering people and, the fact that she took this from a conversation to implementing this and doing it, we supported her. That’s exactly what I want to see within our team so I was really, really proud of her.”
This community-focused collection of resources has been dubbed the Jacobson Memorial Dementia Library, named after the husband of one of the first couples to move into Elite Care. Although its namesake, Ralph Jacobson, passed on a few years ago and his widow, Patti, spoke at the grand opening. She shared stories that Ralph was fond of and talked about books she’d read that had been a comfort to her dealing with the memory-robbing disease that has stricken an estimated 5.2 million Americans.
The Jacobson Memorial Dementia Library was made possible by several individuals and its existence has strengthened Elite Care’s partnership with HOPE, a Vancouver-based organization that supports the caregivers of people stricken with dementia-related diseases. HOPE’s executive director and author of the book “My Name is Thelma, But I Don’t Know Who I Am,’’ Jan Malone, also spoke at the grand opening. HOPE will use the space created in the lending library to gather with caregivers and offer support in an intimate setting.
Hess described the dementia library as “a warm, inviting room within our community.” It’s a 650-square-foot space with comfortable seating so area residents can grab a book, sit down and read right there. There’s a chalkboard wall for young children to entertain themselves with. All the resources available, from books to videos to extensive studies, are available for check out on the honor system and people are encouraged to donate any dementia-related resources along those lines they feel would be valuable to the wider public.
Elite Care’s support of the Jacobson Memorial Dementia Library is a natural extension of their passion to provide uniquely personal assisted living to the aging population. Hess explained that the average resident is typically in their last three-to-five years of life, approximately 89 years old, and 85 percent have some form of dementia and need help with several of the basic daily needs like showering, eating and dressing.
Elite Care’s Vancouver campus is made up of four large homes with an average of 12 residents in each home. Each home is staffed with a culinary-trained chef and its own full-time activities coordinator.
As a result of Elite Care’s attention to the social aspect of living, residents average less than one day in the hospital per year and less than one 9-1-1 call in the last year of life. While they tend to the physical needs of the aging, it is the sense of community that has been widely proven to be life-sustaining that Elite Care focuses on. Because each of the four homes has an open kitchen, 95 percent of residents eat in the dining room instead of alone in their private quarters.
Resident-tended free range chickens, a year-round greenhouse named Barnes’ Barn after one of the current residents who loves to garden, and a resident board of directors are just a few of the other opportunities that create community and a feeling of empowerment at Sylvan Park.
Of the community reaction to the Dementia Library, Hess said, “When we had the grand opening there were people there in tears and what it told me was that it just hit home. They had either gone through it or were going through it and saw it (the library) as a vehicle to reduce anxiety and/or help folks in the community.”
Elite Care at Sylvan Park is located at 2410 NE 112th Ave., Vancouver. For more information, go to www.elitecare.com or call (360) 892-2273. For more information about HOPE, call (360) 607-4655.
