I'm not sure when I first became familiar with the concept of adult day centers. I think it was before I came to work at the University of Indianapolis Center for Aging & Community. The way I viewed these centers then was as "day care for adults."
Oh, how much I had to learn! Over the four years that I've worked at CAC, I've come to understand that adult day centers are not about glorified babysitting for the senior set. Most of my education on the matter has come through Joy's House, an adult day center on the north side of Indianapolis. I've been familiar with Joy's House since the early days when they occupied a small former farmhouse in a now urban area of the city.
Recently, I was pleased to have the opportunity to tour their newly expanded and renovated building. During that tour, what I've come to know about adult day services was reinforced. These services serve both adults in need of care for a few hours during the day (many who are older, though not all) as well as their caregivers.
Guests (as the folks at Joy's House refer to them) of adult day services receive:
- Care and supervision
- Opportunities to socialize with others
- Genuine love, compassion and respect from staff
- Opportunities to participate in activities including gardening, art, music, games and more
- Meals and snacks
Caregivers who trust their loved ones to the adult day service receive:
- Respite -- a chance to take a break from caregiving responsibilities to work or pursue other activities
- Support from staff who understand the demands caregiving places upon people
- Opportunities to share the joys that also come with caregiving
- Resources that may range from meal prep services to personal care services to libraries of information
I'm sure there is much more that adult day centers have to offer. But I think that's a pretty good list from an outsider's perspective.
As our population continues to age and our older adults choose to age in place, I think adult day centers will continue to play an even greater role. If you haven't been to visit an adult day center, find one near you to learn more. Perhaps you're considering care for a loved one. Maybe you have a few hours a month that you'd like to spend volunteering. I hope what you'll find upon visiting is a place that makes you think to yourself, "wow, they are really doing good here!"
For more information on this type of care, visit the National Adult Day Services Association's website.
Thanks to Joy's House for sharing the pictures in this post.
Amy Magan
Communications Manager
The U.S. Administration on will host a Community Living Programming Webinar on Tuesday, December 15 from 3:00 - 4:00pm EST.
"Adding and Sustaining Consumer Direction in Aging Network Programs: Challenges, Insights, and Successes" is available to all aging network administrators and staff. It provides a brief overview of consumer direction: comparisons to traditional services and research results; however, the majority of the content focuses on the implementation of consumer direction in current community living programs.
A panel of AAA administrators and staff will discuss their experiences with consumer direction, common challenges and solutions, and the current status of their programs. The webinar will also tour helpful websites and electronic resources. A comprehensive resource guide filled with additional tools and detailed information is available to accompany the webinar.
To sign up for the webinar, click here.
Judging one another is natural. I learned this from watching Desperate Housewives (DH). For those of you TV dramedy neophytes, like I was pre-DH, this is a television drama that is cleverly written and masterfully executed, depicting the twists and turns that occur in the day-to-day life experiences of a group of women in a fictional suburban neighborhood called, “Wisteria Lane.” My pre-DH judgment about such programming was that it was a waste of time and the mind. However, I watched several episodes that were specifically recommended by a friend and quickly became a fan of those inhabitants of Wisteria Lane.
Judging one another is natural. I learned that from reading articles about DNA that indicate that we are “hard-wired” to judge one another by the genes we inherit that carry bits of our ancestors’ experiences to help us adapt and survive better based on what they learned in their lifetimes. Being a good judge can keep you alive, help you enjoy greater longevity and health, and ensure there is indeed a next generation to carry on the human race.
And so, this is how we do it—just fill in the blanks, “She/he is too…(tall/short, fat/skinny, pretty/ugly, rich/poor, smart/dumb, simple/pretentious, sloppy/neat, sweet/mean, pure/nasty, young/old, sexy/unappealing)…you get the idea. The problem is that we rarely use our judgment genes for survival any longer. Instead, all of these adjectives separate us from the “other” in a way that does harm to our emotional well-being as individuals and erodes the connections that are essential for our survival as a human and humane community.
Why did people express negative judgments about that particular relationship when there were many, many other issues of interest on Desperate Housewives? Falling in love is a good thing, right? We celebrate it, build holidays around it, and spend a lot of money supporting it. This is how we do it. Oh right, unless the persons involved are too OLD.
Judging one another is natural, but when it leads to discrimination and prejudice it no longer serves a valuable biological purpose. On the contrary, it hurts everyone involved. Getting older should not make us feel desperate or bring judgment upon us, when it is in fact such a great achievement.
I applaud all of the Mrs. McCluskey’s of the world who don’t accept the limitations of others who judge them based upon their age.
Tamara Wolske, MS
Academic Program Director
The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation has awarded $1.85 million of funding to nine research teams to study how digital games can impact health behaviors and outcomes. Three of the grants have been given to teams studying the impact of digital games on older adults.
Long Island University (Brooklyn, NY) Dance Video Game Training and Falling in Parkinson’s Disease—compares the use of a commercially available dance pad video game, Dance Dance Revolution, to two traditional treatment options that help people with Parkinson’s Disease reduce their risk of falling by increasing their balance, strength, endurance, motor coordination and visual-motor integration. The two traditional treatments are rhythmic stepping and treadmill training with music. The researchers assess balance, motor function, reaction time and self-confidence to evaluate the game in comparison to the two traditional treatments. They also use functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) to observe participants’ brain activity.
University of California, San Francisco (San Francisco, CA) A Video Game to Enhance Cognitive Health in Older Adults. As people age, they lose some of their ability to sustain their attention and to focus their attention on their main task while ignoring distractions. This study aims to improve these and other related cognitive skills by using a driving game in which players practice paying attention to relevant information, such as traffic signs, and ignoring irrelevant information, such as billboards. The study monitors brain activity with electroencephalogram (EEG) recordings and observes eye position and game performance in younger adults (ages 18 to 30) and older adults (ages 60 to 80) before and after six weeks of game play. The study assesses changes in cognitive ability, brain activity and transfer of game-related skills to similar cognitive operations and activities that take place in daily life.
University of Southern California (Los Angeles, CA) Robot Motivator: Towards Adaptive Health Games for Productive Long-Term Interaction—examines the influence of virtual social characters on people’s motivation to exercise. Study participants ages 60 and older are randomly assigned to exercise by following the lead of either (1) an embodied character, which is a human-looking robot that demonstrates exercises right there in the room with them or (2) an animated presentation of the same robot on a television screen. The study investigates the role of physical embodiment and social presence on participants’ motivation to engage and persist in exercise and physical activity.
For more information, click here.
When I think back on the Thanksgivings of my childhood, I don't remember the food. Christmas, yes -- ham and cheesy potatoes, layered salad, springerle cookies and the annual green cornflake wreath with the red hot candies for holly berries. But Thanksgiving, brings more to mind the legions of people packed into the home of whomever was hosting that year -- my dad's 12 siblings and all their families formed quite an army to be fed.
However, when I got married and began having quiet Thanksgivings with my husband's parents, one set of grandparents and brother, things were different.
First, there is no rush to the buffet line -- we enjoy Thanksgiving dinner all seated around the dining room table. Second, I think because the atmosphere is calmer, I noticed the food more. And one food that everyone seemed to look forward to was his grandmother's sausage stuffing.
I'd never been a fan of stuffing and in fact generally didn't bother to even put it on my Thanksgiving plate. But presented with Buck's (that's what Mike calls his grandmother) secret sausage stuffing, it was polite to at least try it.
Delicious! Wow, I know that no stuffing I'd ever been served at my family Thanksgivings tasted like this. So, I came to look forward to Buck's sausage stuffing as part of the Thanksgiving ritual, too.
About seven years ago, Mike had surgery just before Thanksgiving, so we decided to stay home and celebrate the holiday with just our children. I bought a turkey breast and some jarred gravy, got the fixings for green bean casserole and made a pumpkin roll. Of course, it wouldn't be Thanksgiving without Buck's sausage stuffing. So I called to ask her for the recipe.
"All right, but you can't tell anyone my secret," she warned.
"Not a problem," I assured her, getting out a pen and piece of paper, mindful that this was the passing of a tradition, one that someday I'll pass on to my own daughter.
"Take one pound of ground sausage and brown it in a pan."
Ok. I can do that. Mike's grandmother went on:
"Then make a box of Stove Top Stuffing, stir in the ground sausage with a little bit of the grease and serve it with a smile!"
What?! This sweet grandmother's signature stuffing recipe was Stove Top? I must have sounded incredulous, because she went on to explain.
"For nearly 50 years, I would make sausage stuffing from scratch at Thanksgiving. It was a lot of work and one year I decided I was tired of doing it. So I bought the Stove Top and secretly made the sausage stuffing with that. No one caught on and everyone still seemed to like the stuffing, so I've done it the easy way ever since!"
I assured her that her secret is safe with me (except now you all know it!). To which she replied, "Good. Because the potatoes are from a box too."
I guess that's the beauty of getting older - having the perogative to do things as you want.
The Sneaky ChefAmy MaganCommunications Manager
"When Did I Get Old: Reflections on Aging Today" will make its public television debut on WFYI-TV in Indianapolis on Thursday, November 19 at 9:00pm EST.
Audiences at several viewing events have been excited to carry forth the message presented in the film, requesting copies to take back to their communities. Using examples from across Indiana, the documentary looks at four key areas for individuals and communities to consider in regard to aging: perception, purpose, place and preparation.
Though the film uses examples and aging experts from Indiana, the questions it raises are relevant to communities throughout the U.S. The collaborators of the documentary have also produced a discussion guide that will allow community groups to thoughtfully consider the subjects of perceptions, purpose, place and preparation as they relate to aging.
Additional air dates and times include:
Friday, November 20, 2009 at 4:00am EST on WFYI-TV 20.1
Saturday, November 21, 2009 at 4:00pm EST on WFYI-TV 20.1
Monday, November 23, 2009 at 4:30am EST on WFYI-TV 20.1
Thursday, November 26, 2009 at 8:30pm EST on WFYI-TV 20.3
"When Did I Get Old: Reflections on Aging Today" was produced by WFYI Productions in partnership with the University of Indianapolis Center for Aging & Community and the Indiana University Center on Aging and Community, with cooperation from Indiana Grant Makers Alliance and the Indiana Division of Aging, and with support from the Daniels Fund in Denver, Colorado.
For more information about "When Did I Get Old: Reflections on Aging Today," including how you can arrange for a viewing for your community or group, please call the University of Indianapolis Center for Aging & Community at (317) 791-5930.
Copies of the DVD will be available for purchase from WFYI in the coming weeks. Click here to go to the WFYI online store.
If you've paid any attention to the ads on television or in the newspaper -- or if you've glanced at the calendar, you know that 'tis the season for holiday shopping. A recent article by eMarketer Digital Intelligence cites data from the Cable & Telecommunications Association for Marketing that shows a majority of seniors who use the internet do so, in part, for online shopping.
Online shopping among elder internet users (age 65 and older) was second only to their use of e-mail.
Add to that the 71% of Baby Boomers (ages 43-64) who engage in online shopping and that's a lot of purchasing power. In its daily e-newsletter sent on November 16, eMarketer suggest that companies offering e-commerce sites would do well to make their sites inviting to older shoppers by ensuring easy navigation, using large click buttons and fewer confusing boxes.
For more articles regarding older adults and their use of the world wide web, click here and here.
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