Serving as a caregiver can be an emotional and frustrating journey, as communicating with your loved ones and understanding them becomes more difficult.
However, when caregivers and professionals receive training in the Positive Approach to Care®, they’ll have a comprehensive understanding of seniors with memory diseases.
The best way to offer support and care to someone with dementia or Alzheimer’s disease is to understand dementia and learn about their daily life challenges and brain changes.
Being a caregiver can be stressful, but learning new skills to adapt to your loved one’s needs and how to respond to their feelings can make life better for you and your loved one.
Learn more about Positive Approach to Care® (PAC), strategies and techniques taught by dementia expert Teepa Snow, how The Kensington Falls Church implements Positive Approach to Care, and the type of care your loved one will receive when transitioning to one of our communities.
We hosted a recent event with Tonya Embly, Director of Memory Care & Certified PAC Trainer here at The Kensington Falls Church, for an interactive training about The Basics of a Positive Approach to Care: How to Care for Your Loved One with Dementia. We discussed the methods, philosophy, and exactly how our community utilizes the PAC method to live out Our Promise to love and care for your family as we do our own.
What is a PAC certification?
One must become certified to educate, consult, or coach caregivers or staff in Positive Approach to Care® practices.
Teepa Snow, a dementia care expert and occupational therapist with over 35 years of experience, developed PAC training and certification.
Training will provide caregiver education to help overcome common misconceptions about dementia by learning what physical and chemical changes occur in the brain as memory diseases progress.
Positive Approach to Care is a person-centered approach to care, meaning each person with dementia will need to be cared for differently, based on their individual personalities and needs.
Upon certification, one can teach PAC strategies, techniques, and therapeutic approaches to others caring for a person with dementia.
Teepa Snow’s Positive Approach techniques
As an advocate for those living with dementia, Teepa Snow has made it her mission to provide caregiver education and teach professionals how to use therapeutic approaches.
Teepa’s techniques can help caregivers, professionals, and those living with dementia learn the following:
- Effective management techniques for challenging behaviors and stress triggers
- How to encourage their loved ones
- How to create a supportive environment
- Dementia’s effect on the brain
- To celebrate individuality and uniqueness
- How to communicate more effectively
- How to improve someone with dementia’s mental health
- How not to treat someone with dementia
Those who learn PAC can help seniors with dementia live healthier, happier, and more fulfilled lives.
The Kensington Falls Church team strives to help our residents by looking at them as individuals and following Positive Approach to Care ® practices.
Each of our residents receives their own individualized care plans, so our team can give them the support and assistance needed to meet their care needs.
How does this approach make a difference in caregiving for those with Alzheimer’s and dementia?
Following Positive Approach to Care® helps caregivers ensure that seniors with Alzheimer’s disease and dementia maintain or improve their quality of life.
Understanding that a loved one’s behavior, emotions, interactions, and reactions are changing due to changes in their brain can help caregivers respond rather than react.
Your family members or loved ones have no control over what is happening to their brain, and there is no way to change your loved ones back into the person they were before their disease.
But, with knowledge, understanding, and patience, you can learn to communicate and bond with your loved one again.
When caregivers reconnect with their affected family members, it strengthens their relationship and improves their life satisfaction.
How The Kensington Falls Church implements the positive care approach?
The Positive Care Approach allows our team to give your senior loved one the proper comfort and care.
We offer around-the-clock, high-acuity care, meaning that we can support residents with even the highest level of care needs without needing to transition them.
With the knowledge that seniors with memory loss will experience different symptoms and need different types of care, we designed two memory care neighborhoods to adapt to our resident’s needs.
The Connections and Haven neighborhoods are safe, comfortable, and cozy.
Connections is for our more independent residents in the early to middle stages of dementia, while Haven is for our higher-need residents in the later stages.
We also offer various activities, wellness programs, exercises, socialization opportunities, and dining services to fit our resident’s personalities, abilities, and needs.
The Kensington Falls Church PAC team—your care partners
The Kensington Falls Church is an enhanced assisted living and memory care community in northern Virginia that can cater to all needs.
While we were already experts in memory care services, we decided to take our training and services a step further and become a Positive Approach to Care® Designated senior living community.
Our Promise to love and care for your family as we do our own can be seen in all we do, as Our team members offer our residents support, assistance, comfort, patience, understanding, and respect.
We aim to maintain and improve the health and happiness of your loved one by providing the following services:
- Full spectrum of clinical care
- High acuity care
- A full-time RN
- Medication administration and injections
- Individualized care plans
- Nutritious gourmet dining services
- Speciality diets
- Complimentary meals for family and friends
- Life-enrichment activities 7 days a week
- Memory cafe
- Rehabilitation and wellness services
- Physical therapy
- Occupational therapy
- Speech therapy
- Alzheimer’s care
- Dementia care
- Parkinson’s Communication Club
- Parkinson’s Energized Fitness
Contact us or check out our blog to learn more about our cozy suites, enhanced communities, exceptional services, caregivers resources, and upcoming events.