Cathy Cress

Expert in Aging Life and Geriatric Care Management

Coming to you-Town Square- San Diego 50’s Fake town that Revolutionizes Reminiscence Therapy

Last week the Wall St Journal covered the most revolutionary version of Reminiscence therapy-  Town Square. Reminiscence therapy is a treatment that uses all the senses — sight, touch, taste, smell, and sound — to help people with dementia remember events, people and places from their past lives, just as Town Square does.

I took a tour of Town Square on Friday while attending the Western Regional Aging Life Conference in San Diego and it was at the same time mind boggling, fabulously fun and a trip back to my childhood in the 50’s.

The man who discovered the beta-amyloid plaques, George Glenner funded reminiscence therapy through Adult Daycare for 3 decades. His reminiscence legacy has exploded into Town Square, this fake 50’s town built for dementia sufferers so they can spend their day where their mind is calmest in their  50’s past.

Built by the San Diego opera the town has a  kitchen refrigerator like the one in my house in the early 50’s, a barbershop with Elvis hanging on the wall , a Malt shop called Rosie’s Dinner with jukebox, just like the ones my boyfriend Steve Paul and I played while we ate greasy french fries and mooned over each other in the early 60’s. Rosie’s has now collectible formica tables, with chrome chairs but that is a sturdy replica that seniors are safe in with added chrome arms.

Town Square Rosie’s acts as act as a lunch spot for the 90 participants, spilling out into the patio.

It has a garage with a luscious, shiny black T  bird from the early fifties with gleaming chrome, my dream car when I was in Atlantic City High School.

Not only in this open for the last month but they rent it out for corporate events for fifties parties where everyone can dress up like Mad men and women in those divine 50’s dresses that I still lust for. And on top of this Town Square will franchise and its next ideation will appear in Baltimore

I came home hearing Patti Page sing Old Cape Cod , thinking of 1956 when I discovered Elvis, puberty, boys, small breasts, adolescence and wildly danced the jitterbug in Lou Molinari garage with all my friends, my life exploding. I was there again and felt glorious just like the lucky residents of Town Square.

 

 

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Caregiver Burden- Whose Problem Is it?

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Whose Problems is it?

After climbing through the barbed wire of who is my client the care manager faces, whose problem is it. Many times caregiver’s seek help from a care manager or other professional, asking them to fix the care receiver’s problems. But even though caregiver or person who asked the care manager to find a solution to the problem, the care receiver or patient may deny anything is wrong. So when the care receiver or patient won’t work with the care manager the care manager may have to “ fix” the person who asked for help in the first place, the caregiver. Steven Zarit points out that this is often the case with patients Alzheimer’s disease.

 Rarely does the dementia clients seek help for themselves. Instead often the family member approaches the aging professional, on behalf of the “ patient”. Usually this is because problems have begun to erupt in the caregiver’s life related to care receiver.

The problems that come up for the family caregiver are dependent on how the family member appraises the situation and then take responsibility for the older person. In the meantime the older family member with the problem usually does no acknowledge that there is any problem at all

 

PBS series ” Taking Care” Begins

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PBS series Taking Care – PBS News Hour Series on Long-Term Care in America on caregiving features excellent first segment  segment on mothers and daughters  showing why the Whole Family Approach is so important in aging.  The series is sponsered by the SCAN Foundation a-profit public charity devoted to transforming health care for seniors in ways that encourage independence and preserve dignity.

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