Lion’s Gate Senior Living in Voorhees Township, a senior community “rooted in Jewish values,” according to its website, has earned a coveted accreditation from a nationally recognized leader in dementia care called Comfort Matters.
This accreditation means the facility is now equipped to lead the region in caring for those who suffer from dementia, said Tena Alonzo, a founding practitioner of the Comfort Matters Care Program who serves as director of education and research at Beatitudes Campus Senior Living in Phoenix, Arizona.
“What is so important to understand about Comfort Matters is that we all understand what [dementia] is,” Alonzo said. “When you’re looking at someone who’s living with dementia, what we’re trying to do is care for them, to do for them what they would do for themselves if they could. This is not about doing it our way, it’s about us doing it their way — 100 different ways — based on who they are and what’s important to them.”
The Comfort Matters method can be understood as a way to learn more about the individual needs of clients as a way to alleviate symptoms of dementia, which affects memory and the ability to think and communicate effectively. The staff at Lion’s Gate underwent training and learned how to approach those who suffer from dementia.
Lion’s Gate COO Meredith Becker gave an example of what this method looks like in practice.
“If somebody is walking, for example, and they are pacing, the question is why. We [might] learn that perhaps they were a runner, and they need that time to be able to stretch and walk,” Becker said. “Their pacing is not because they’re anxious, but because they need physical movement and activity. Whereas other places would potentially see that as an anxiety response and want to utilize medication, we try our best to figure out the root cause and different mechanisms of what we can do to make somebody feel better.”
While the Comfort Matters program isn’t Jewish, Lion’s Gate certainly is. The senior living facility is guided by Jewish values, with those values serving as one reason that Lion’s Gate decided to look into improving its care for those with dementia. With the process that Lion’s Gate already has for incoming residents, the Comfort Matters accreditation just made sense.
“One of the first things that we do is ask for a questionnaire to be filled out by the family. We ask for details about what their life was like [before they came to us]. How many siblings did they have? What did they do professionally? What are their preferences, as simple as whether they like chocolate or vanilla,” Becker said. “Because when we are caring for that individual, we need to know what makes them tick, what makes them reassured, and ultimately, what brings them comfort.”
The Comfort Matters program is now over 20 years old, and Alonzo said that it was developed in a way that is consistent with the values that Lion’s Gate already held long before they joined forces. When Comfort Matters was founded, its creators knew there was a need for something different, even if they didn’t know exactly what that was right away.
“We are an innovative community that really believed that we could do better, and as we looked at the evidence and research, we recognized that we didn’t know what better could be,” she said.
The team found the work of a U.K.-based scientist whose ideas largely served as the basis for the program.
“[He] spoke about the need for comfort, the idea that all actions are meaningful, and that as the person loses their vulnerabilities, it’s important to recognize their actions as indicators of joy or indicators of distress, and the need for a sense of community and purpose,” Alonzo said. “And this really spoke to us. What we did is we began this process internally of focusing on who people are and what their goals were about their life, what was important to them. And out of that grew the program.”
On Jan. 14, the Lion’s Gate and Comfort Matters teams joined together at the New Jersey facility to celebrate their partnership and the start of the accredited care. While the celebration was a special one, Becker noted that it is the start of an era, not the conclusion of a different one.
“We’re not done. We’ve just hit the beginning, and it’s something we’re going to maintain. It’s something that we’re looking to expand upon … people are going to continue to age, they continue to have a memory impairment diagnosis of some kind, and [because of] the silver tsunami that is coming, we need to be able to do more and do better, and that’s why we’re not stopping. We’re going to keep on going. We’ve seen the work. We’ve seen the results, and we want to continue,” she said.