Additional Resources Mentioned
Takeaways
Tip 1: Assess the Overall Fit
When looking for a memory care community, many families focus on practical aspects like location, price, and amenities. While these factors are important, James suggests that philosophical alignment and rapport with the management team are even more crucial for long-term success.
When evaluating potential communities, James recommends shifting your mindset from “us versus them” to “us collectively versus dementia.” This perspective can transform the relationship from the beginning.
Tip 2: Embrace the Community Aspect
Moving your loved one from home to a community setting represents a fundamental shift in their care environment—from one-on-one care to being part of a group.
In a memory care community, your loved one gains socialization and activities, while you get support from multiple caregivers. However, the trade-off is that your loved one becomes one of many residents, each with different types of dementia and varying needs.
Tip 3: Acknowledge Your Role Has Changed
When your loved one moves into a care community, your role shifts from being the primary caregiver to being a care partner working alongside professional caregivers.
This shift requires humility and a willingness to learn from the professional care team. Instead of coming from a place of judgment when things aren’t done exactly as you would do them, approach with curiosity. Ask questions like “Help me understand” or “Teach me” to gain insights from their perspective.
Tip 4: Recognize That the Diagnosis Will Progress
A critical aspect of the care partnership is understanding that your loved one’s condition will continue to change over time. In fact, by the time someone moves into a memory care community, they’re often in the steeper part of their dementia journey where changes happen more rapidly.
When you notice changes in your loved one’s condition or care needs—perhaps they’re wearing the same clothes more often or experiencing more falls—resist the assumption that the quality of care has declined. Instead, consider that their dementia might be progressing.
Tip 5: Acknowledge Your Grief
The dementia journey involves ongoing loss, a phenomenon Sue calls “drip grief.” As your loved one’s condition progresses, you experience new losses almost daily—abilities that disappear, memories that fade, personality changes that emerge.
Finding healthy ways to acknowledge and process your grief—whether through support groups, counseling, or other means—is essential not only for your wellbeing but for maintaining a productive partnership with the care team.
Tip 6: Engage with the Community Caregiving Team
The families whose loved ones have the best quality of life tend to be those who actively engage with the care team. This engagement goes beyond basic communication to building genuine relationships with the people caring for your loved one.
Creating an atmosphere of mutual respect not only improves communication but often results in better care. Caregivers who feel appreciated and understood are more likely to go above and beyond for your loved one.
Building a True Partnership
Creating a collaborative relationship with your loved one’s care community team isn’t just about being nice—it’s about achieving the best possible outcomes for your loved one with dementia.
By reframing the relationship from “us versus them” to “us collectively versus dementia,” you can transform what is often an adversarial dynamic into a true partnership. As James explains, “You are your loved one’s expert, we are dementia experts. And the two together give us the best chance to get this right.”
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Full Episode Transcript
Nancy Treaster
Is your loved one in a care community or are you thinking about moving them into one? If so, do you know how to build a collaborative relationship with the care community team? In this episode, Sue and I are talking with James Lee. He’s the CEO and co-founder of Bella Groves, an award-winning memory care community. And you’ll hear he’s also an expert in how to build a true partnership with the care community team. We’re sharing six tips.
Sue Ryan
It is my honor, James, to introduce you to our listeners, Nancy, and you and I have had wonderful conversations and you bring such a depth and breadth of knowledge in that. You’ve been in this space for over 17 years and it began with your journey as a caregiver. And it ultimately led to you expanding out the variety of ways you are supporting the community from, as Nancy mentioned, founding Bella Groves and one of the things I am most impressed with, and you can give all the background about Bella Grove, is I love what your tagline and guiding star are, that you’ve actually trademarked. Love this. Unconditional joy. What a fabulous way to approach being in a community. In addition, you have created the think tank for aging service.
In addition, you’ve created the Think Tank, which has been going on for more than five years, which is supportive of aging services. You’ve got an executive coaching and consulting firm, and you’re a professional speaker. So you’re communicating your messages in a variety of different ways for us, and we appreciate it so much.
James Lee | Bella Groves
Yeah, thank you so much Sue and Nancy. It’s been lovely to get to know you through all of our prep conversations and any guest who’s been a part of the caregivers journey probably could attest to the fact that we learn and unpack so much in the prep. You guys do such a great job in making guests ready for this, but I’m really excited to be here and in particular be talking about this topic which comes up so often just in private.
And I think to all three of us credit, we thought, let’s record it so it lives somewhere and people can share it.
Nancy Treaster
That is so true and we hear a lot of questions from our listeners just about how to even figure out how to find a care community and certainly how to partner with one is another struggle. So this is helpful.
James Lee | Bella Groves
Yeah, no, it’s been, you know, in the 17 years that I’ve been in this profession, 13 of those years have been in what I would call traditional senior living. I’ve worked for many organizations, some large, some small, but before Bella Groves, I worked for other people within other organizations, other philosophies of care, and I’ve learned so much through that.
And in the last four years since I’ve had a chance to start Bella Groves, our small business here in near San Antonio, one theme that has kind of transcended all of those years of experience is this insight that caregivers, both family caregivers and professional caregivers, for whatever reason, the default setting, the default relationship that I have seen happen over and over again is that there’s some adversarial relationship.
And I don’t mean contentious, it just means like family caregivers take on the role of advocate as if the professional caregiver is not an advocate. So I think this topic of family caregivers and professional caregivers really needing to develop a partnership, it’s become a major theme for me and through Bella Groves and all of my other efforts, it’s one of the things that I really, really wanna help highlight too to bridge this gap to better outcomes for people living with dementia in particular.
Sue Ryan
Those are so powerful, James, and thank you very much. And for this podcast, part of what we want to make sure we’re doing is guiding you to get the most out of your community for both you and your care receiver. And in order for us to do that, it’s important to figure out what the best fit is for the community to be supporting what you need. And that leads us to tip one, which is assess the overall fit.
James Lee | Bella Groves
Yeah, you know, when people start the process of looking at dementia care communities, you know, first of all, I think going into the mindset that it’s not us versus you, it’s not a caregiver family trying to hold other people accountable. The truth is both parties want to be accountable to the same outcome. So one of the simple reframes that I offer for families is instead of thinking us versus you, think us collectively versus dementia.
It’s Nancy, James, and Bella Groves, all of us, versus dementia. So that’s really a place that I’d want to start with. And then layering on top of that, most families are looking at dementia care communities for the first time, maybe a second time, if they’ve had the circumstance of needing to look for it more than once. But almost nobody goes into it, goes into the process of researching dementia care from the lens of the expertise that somebody like me has naturally from all this experience. So what I mean to say is that families look for very logical things to view when they look at dementia care. So they’re looking at practical things, location, price, know, how nice does it look? What does the food taste like? And I would understand why people would look at that first. But over and over again, what I’ve seen is things like philosophical alignment and true partnership feeling that lead to really great outcomes. You could have your loved one in a very small, modest, no-frills dementia care community. And if you and that care team, in particular you and the management team, if you are in lockstep, your loved one is gonna have a great outcome. Conversely, you could find yourself in the most elaborately decorated, beautiful dementia care community with all sorts of awards.
And if you are not on the same page with that executive director, your loved one might struggle, and more importantly, you might struggle. So this idea of looking beyond the practical elements of fit and really determining, are you a fit from a philosophical standpoint? And even something as simple as rapport. Do you get along? Is there a nice warm feeling between the two of you? I think that’s something a lot of people miss.
Nancy Treaster
Well, and part of it is also, I think, understanding that you’re becoming part of a community, right? Which sort of leads us into tip two, because we’re, you know, we’re becoming, we have to think of this as a community, not just as, you know, the same thing that was happening at home.
James Lee | Bella Groves
Yeah, it’s a pretty fundamental shift when it goes from one-on-one in your home to one-to-many in a community. And as we were preparing for our episode today, I think this was one of the points that we highlighted a lot. And I think both of you, and Sue, I think you in particular had some experiences with this where you had to shift your mindset a little bit from
I’m taking care of one person too, oh, okay, my loved one is part of a group of people now.
James Lee | Bella Groves
So yeah, I love this as a tip number two of embracing the community aspect of dementia care. I know, the way I think about this is that any decision that you make in life is really making trade-offs, right? So if you’re gonna receive more of this, you might have less of that. And in the context for dementia care, if you wanted one-on-one direct support and care for your loved one,
Well, you have the option of that. You can bring somebody into your home and help them with that one-on-one care. The trade-off is it’s gonna cost a lot of money. And not only financially is it gonna be almost cost prohibitive for the majority of people, but the other part is your loved one is not gonna have a lot of social engagement, right? You’ve got one person that’s trying to be all things to your loved one. Conversely, in a dementia care community, you get a lot of socialization. You get a lot of helping hands, you get a lot of personal relief to you, the family caregiver. But the trade off of that is, now your loved one is one of many other residents of that community, all of whom, by the way, have different types of dementia and are experiencing dementia differently. Other people’s needs and symptoms are going to be part of the mix here.
I think if you go into a partnership understanding, okay, there’s other people in the mix here and we’re gonna have to be thoughtful of that, you’re gonna be set up for a lot better experience if you approach it that way.
One thing I would also add on top of that beyond just looking at it as a community aspect of caregiving is that you are going to get close to other families. If you are an engaged family member of your loved one, you are also going to run into other people who are in the same or similar situation as you. So I think one of the most beautiful things that I’ve seen happen again and again at Bella Groves is that when a new family member is potentially coming into the mix,
one of our family members has and frequently volunteers to reach out to that person. Even going so far as to have a cup of coffee and having lunch, have you done that? Yeah. Yeah. Why do you do that? What’s the benefit that you see of that occurring?
Nancy Treaster
That’s so nice.
Sue Ryan
Part of what I wanted to be able to do for them is give them answers to questions they didn’t know to ask. I wanted to help them through the emotional part of those first few days when you’re, it’s like, you know, I haven’t been a mom, so I haven’t dropped my child off to school for the first day. I have dropped off several loved ones to a community for the first time. And so it’s being able to invite them into the journey. Know they’re not alone. Give them a face and a voice. Have them see someone who’s gotten adjusted to this part of their care that they will be able to do that and just help smooth the path for them.
Nancy Treaster
You know, Sue, one of the other things you always talk about too is recognizing at that point too that your role has changed from being, you know, the primary caregiver to being a care partner with the care community, right?
Sue Ryan
Sure, absolutely. When our loved ones are at home, we’re the primary caregiver and we are managing the care for our loved one. And we begin to outgrow that role sometimes and we bring care into the home or we identify as I did several times that the right choice, the wisest choice is for us to move our loved one into a care community. And we do that because we need someone who’s been able to provide the care that we haven’t.
So we shift from being the primary caregiver to what we talk about now with tip three, which is that your role has changed. And for example, with mine, when we moved my dad and when we moved my husband into a care community, there were still areas where we’re the prime, the primary care. There were several areas where I was still a primary caregiver. And yet in other areas, I’m now the care partner and it’s important for me to do my very best to support the care team in the community. And so I reached out to them. I got to know them. I asked them questions and I said, what are the things that will be most helpful for me to share with you? And when we walk through that, I would say, teach me. So I didn’t come at anything from a place of judgment. And if things weren’t done the same way, I would have done it.
I asked, I used curiosity, help me understand, teach me so I could learn from their lens because James, like to the point that you raised before, as our loved ones’ journeys progress, when we have them at home, we’re caring for them differently than when we’re caring in a community. These professionals know what to do and know how to provide the care. I don’t. So it’s really helpful to them.
James Lee | Bella Groves
Yeah, there is a very strong correlation in my experience of seeing so many families go through this, that when a family care partner is really kind to our caregivers and not just polite, I mean, actually care about them, check in with them, write a thank you note, you know, and in particular, whenever something doesn’t go right, imagine the power of a family caregiver saying, Nancy, you know what? I know you weren’t able to help with that shower. I’ve experienced this so much. Or I’ll give something very, very specific here that a lot of people may not talk about. So let’s say a family member comes in and one of their loved ones, a resident at a community, just had an accident.
All many families in that situation, they’re gonna respond with the advocate head on first, and they’re gonna come out and they’re gonna get to the caregiver to get to the manager and say, this is unacceptable, this condition or, and the truth is you may not know what happened. That could have just happened a few minutes ago. But if a family member comes and brings attention to that situation, a care situation, and alerts a caregiver, they can go about it one of two typical ways. And the first way is anger.
Right? It’s saying, is unacceptable. You gotta get here. And this is, and so immediately that caregiver, their anxiety goes up and they subconsciously, every time they see you coming into the community, you know, right? Alarm bells are going off compared to if the family member went out and said, hey, my mom needs a little assistance in there. So, you know, why don’t we do this together? And then while you’re helping your mom together, you know, just sharing like,
I know what this is like. I’ve done this so many times. Thank you for always looking after my mom. When you do those things, caregivers, now they feel comfort. They feel safe to be able to talk to you about things that aren’t going well versus a caregiver who has to report bad news to an angry family member. They’re gonna avoid them. And so inadvertently, you’d be shooting yourself in the foot by having this kind of adversarial stance versus family members who are, let me bring you in, let me wrap my arms around you and tell you, appreciate you and I’ve gone through this myself.
Sue Ryan
Yes. And what you’ve identified that’s so helpful. I’m sorry, Nancy, I walked all over you. Go ahead. One of the things that you’ve identified and you talk a lot about, James, is advocating that we, we, you from your land, actually, let me say this differently. One of the things you talk about, James, quite a bit is being in the advocates. Would you share about that? Because it’s so powerful.
James Lee | Bella Groves
Yeah, I think a really healthy mindset for families to take going into this partnership is that it isn’t just that you are an advocate for your loved one, you’re inviting other advocates to be part of your story now too. And so if you go into it thinking this team wants a good outcome, those caregivers want a good outcome and they’re going to advocate for my loved one the same way that I am.
And I think going into it from that perspective that we have co-advocates and not this adversarial default relationship, is, sometimes we see family members come in and there’s kind of this presumption that we are not doing all of the things that we should be doing. But think about how often, if you had a member that you’re caring for in your own home and then a friend of yours unexpectedly came over to your house.
How likely is it that your house is gonna be pristine, that all the laundry is done, that your loved one is showered and their hair is combed, all the men’s, right? How likely is it that all of those things are gonna have happened? Not very likely. And it doesn’t mean you’re a bad caregiver or that you were not being an advocate. It’s just the nature of dementia, right? And so I think knowing that, going into it, knowing that the people that are there to support your loved one are also advocates and that your positive relationship to them will solicit more of that advocacy. That’s what you want.
Sue Ryan
And I think where that comes in, James, especially is, where I think one of the most powerful ways that this is gonna be supportive is leading us into tip four, which is the diagnosis is going to progress.
James Lee | Bella Groves
Yes, right. I think, you know, I don’t know if this statistic still holds, but for the longest time in my profession, what I’ve heard is that the average length of stay for somebody who enters into a dementia care community is typically somewhere around 12 to 18 months, one to one and a half years. But you both know from personal experience that dementia is in the picture for a lot longer than that, right?
So in a dementia care setting, we typically see them for the last year, year and a half, but even then things will continue to progress. So if you can go back in time and look at your loved one in the first year of symptoms starting to show up, and then how did it look three years after that? Well, I bet you care for your loved one, you know, in the beginning versus three years after that looks different.
Five years after that looks even more different. Seven years after that looks very different. By the time that somebody is moving into a dementia care community, not only have they progressed pretty far into their dementia journey and their symptoms, but they’re in the steeper part of their journey. Things will change even faster. So I think recognizing that your loved one’s needs are gonna change.
That’s one of the things that as family members get used to a standard of care of their loved ones and then they start to see gosh mom’s wearing the same clothes more often or her hair seems a little bit more Greasy or gosh, she’s having more falls the assumption sometimes is I guess the care has changed around here You know and they they tend to kind of go to the things like it must be turnover It must be lack of training and the first thought isn’t gosh my mom’s Dementia has really progressed
And so as a care team, we recognize that things are going to change, but sometimes families forget that. And I think if you keep that perspective and you keep yourself educated about what things are going to change, then you’ve got two parties coming into that partnership with an understanding that things will continue to progress.
Sue Ryan
And the point about that that’s so powerful, James, is when we’re all advocates, when we’re seeing a change, we come to ask you the question of teach me what’s going on and help me understand. Is there anything I can be doing to support you? And one of the other things that I have found over the years is that I’m still a very valuable part of their team because they’ve got their lens into my loved one. I’ve got my lens. I may see something in them.
that they wouldn’t have noticed because they don’t know them in the same way I do. And when I see something, I feel it’s my responsibility to introduce that to them so that we can collaboratively look at how we work together to support this new progression with our loved ones.
James Lee | Bella Groves
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, I’m really reducing it down to a bit of an oversimplification here, but for educational purposes, what we talk to our families about is you are your loved one expert, we are dementia experts, right? And the two together give us the best chance to get this right. So there are so many things that you know about your loved one that we will never know unless you bring that to the table.
Conversely, there are so many things that we’ve learned about dementia care from all of our repetition and years of experience that you can’t possibly gather from Google. So if we bring that to the table and you bring your family’s rich story to the table and we put those things together and we approach things with curiosity rather than who didn’t do what, but I’ve got this piece of the puzzle, you’ve got that piece of the puzzle, let’s put it together and see if we can see a clear picture.
Sue Ryan
And there’s another dimension of that puzzle that’s going on every single day, multiple times a day. And that’s what we’re talking about in tip five, which is acknowledging that we, as the loved one for our care receiver, are grieving. And we’re grieving every single day. I call this drip grief.
It helps us recognize that it’s realistic we will be grieving. And instead of looking at it from a blaming perspective that somebody’s not doing the right thing and our loved one can’t do something correctly because of it, that we’re grieving, it’s also reasonable for us to acknowledge we’re not really sure what to do with our grief and to seek support because we don’t want to be stuck in grief. We may not know what to do about it.
This journey has a lot of layers and grief is a significant part of it.
Nancy Treaster
And grief can come out as anger and resentment. And you definitely don’t want to be coming to the table as a care partner with the community care team from a place of anger and resentment as well. So you definitely want to try to address your grief in some way, in whatever way you can with help so that you are bringing your best self to the care community partnership that you’re creating.
James Lee | Bella Groves
Yeah, know, the grief is, it’s a part of this process that I think not enough people acknowledge and address. And in most scenarios, like, you know, I’m an advocate for this partnership approach and therefore I and the team at Bella Gros, we tend to bring up this topic for discussion. We talk about grief in our support groups.
We offer grief counseling to our team members whenever loved ones passed away, whenever our residents passed away. We provide resources to families when they are experiencing grief. But again, not every dementia care community is gonna do the things that we’re doing. this episode and the content of this conversation is to help people where if people aren’t giving you the opportunity to address and talk about your grief, well, now this is your sign, right? This is your opportunity to hear that message that, you know, I kind of think of it as if the three of us were on a team building a house and I broke my leg, you know, and I said, I’m just not going to deal with it. I’m just not going to deal with it, but I’m here. I’m here to help you. No amount of good intention on my part is going to compensate for the fact that I have a broken leg. But, you know, grief is like a broken heart.
And if you’re not addressing that, it will impede and it will affect and it will change the nature of the partnership. And you may think of it as you’re deferring it so that you can take care of it alone on your time when it doesn’t affect anybody else. But here’s the hard truth that maybe a lot of people won’t say is that your grief unaddressed will affect the care team. It will affect the care team. And so I think that…
It’s a gift that you give yourself to process it in real time. And believe me, you are gonna have opportunities afterwards to continue to process it. But it’s a gift that you give yourself and to the professional care team that you acknowledge and deal with.
Sue Ryan
That’s so powerful because they’re also grieving with your loved one and they’ve also experienced this quite a few times. This leads us into tip six, which is to engage with the community caregiving team.
James Lee | Bella Groves
Yeah, our best families, gosh, I almost feel guilty saying it in that context, but let me reframe it to this. I will say that the families whose loved ones have the best standard of care, life, joy, and positive experiences tend to also be the ones whose family members have a rich engagement with our care team. And so as an example,
We had one family member tell us in a care plan meeting recently, hey, there’s a lot of new faces around here that I’ve seen and I’m curious, are you teaching them about my mom’s story and her preferences? They seem a little bit apprehensive about approaching her because some of her symptoms make it harder for brand new caregivers to know. If somebody has expressive aphasia or something where communication is a lot harder.
Yeah, brand new caregivers might feel a little bit more trepidation. But the nature of the question was, are you making sure that your new team members know about my mom? And I said, absolutely, those are things that we’re working on. And then I kind of flipped, I flipped the script a little bit with her and I asked, have you approached those new caregivers to tell them about your mom? Because it’s very different when you tell them, mom loves to dance. If there’s music on, man, she may not be able to talk to you, but she will dance with you. And there’s just something about that. It’s so powerful to hear that directly from a loved one rather than hear your employer tell you about a quote unquote client. So engaging in the community means things like that too.
Sue Ryan
Yes. Absolutely. And one of the things that I prioritized is recognizing the care team. They’re a valuable member of the team. And I wanted to get to know all of them. when I saw someone new, I went right up to them and I learned their names. I greeted them by name. When I saw them, I would frequently go spend the night so that I would get to know the overnight care team as well. And watch the transitions and care about them. did things. I’m the one who creates the notebook. So I had a notebook of things that I thought might help them. Every single week, I gave them a greeting card. And I used to make greeting cards. So that was my thing. I’d kind of make this fun greeting card. But every single week, I made a greeting card to say thank you to them. I would often take them cookies or something else. When Costco had sales on dark chocolate, sea salt caramels, I would always bring them in so that they would have a little special treat. But what I wanted them to understand is how important they were as part of the care team. I saw them, I respected them, I appreciated them, and they would ask me if there was a question. They were fearful of talking to some of the family members because they felt they would be judged or the family members would feel like they weren’t doing their job.
And I flipped it around. it was like, the more that you share with me, the more I have the opportunity to help and things that I could observe. And I would go in and help with the activities that they were doing. How can I be a part of the team and support what’s going on? So I wanted to be an active part of what was going on and meet them where they were as well in giving that care so that I could help them and just really recognize and respect them.
James Lee | Bella Groves (36:51.419)
Yeah, I love when I’m hearing you talk about all of these things, it makes me think about a leader on a team. And in fact, that is kind of what you’re doing is that you are leading this team. And if you were leading a team of employees, you would want to approach them in a similar way, appreciation, coaching, guidance. If people stop talking to their leader, that’s a very bad sign. So if caregivers don’t feel confident telling you bad news, that’s a really bad outcome for everybody. And so creating the atmosphere where, look, of course you want to hold people accountable to things, but also understanding, give them the same amount of grace that you would give yourself. Anything that you would give yourself a little bit of kindness and grace for, extend that to the care team as well. And the thing is, they are going to want to show up better and more for you because of how you treat them. And the natural conclusion of that relationship, I just wanna throw this in there that we are so grateful when families acknowledge and recognize that when your loved one has passed away, we are gonna feel that too. And certainly not to the degree that you would because you’ve known them your whole life or the significant part of your life. we hear this statement sometimes that
Like we’ll say, oh gosh, we love your person. And they will sometimes say, I wish you would have known them when, you know? As if we’re getting a less version of that person now. But I think that’s one of those things that we know that we only get to know the six months, 12 month, 18 month version of your loved one. And we love them deeply anyway. And so while you are grieving the entire person that you knew,
There’s some profound message here about we still love that person anyway here in their last couple of months. So we’re gonna miss this person. And so whenever we get an invitation from families to join the celebration of life or gosh, and certainly this isn’t required, but it lights our hearts whenever somebody acknowledges, we just wanna say thank you to Bella Groves for the care that you provided.
in the last few months here. Those small little courtesies, they do so much for care teams to keep going and keep persisting and keep getting better for future families. I think that’s what we mean by engaging in the community care team is not just to be nice, but if you’re gonna invite them to be a part of your life, invite them all the way.
Nancy Treaster
Yeah, I love the encouragement concept as well. That’s huge.
James Lee | Bella Groves
Thank you.
Sue Ryan
James, thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Thank you so very much for sharing these valuable insights so that people who are considering community and they’re not really sure what it’s like have a much better idea of where and how they can consider it and then how they can be the best care partner when they move their loved one into a community to have the most supportive and advocate versus adversarial relationship. So thank you again very much.
James Lee | Bella Groves
thank you guys. This has been such a wonderful conversation. And the truth is, there’s a lot more of this that we could give. And what I hope this conversation will spark is at least the insight to reframe from this default relationship of us versus them to all getting on the same side and saying us versus dementia. If that one thing can be embedded in somebody’s mind and in their heart, all of the tips will just kind of multiply to other tips. But I really appreciate the platform to talk about this with you all.
Nancy Treaster (40:47.384)
Thank you, thank you, thank you. Let’s summarize. So today we talked with James about how to truly create a partnership with your care community team. And I hopefully reframe the way you’re thinking about that team moving in. We shared six tips. The first tip was to assess the overall fit. Remember, it’s not just about the obvious things. Second tip, embrace the community aspect of dementia community living.
Third, acknowledge your role has changed. The fourth one, I really thought this is critical, is to realize that your loved one’s dementia is going to progress while they’re in the community. So things are going to change. And while those things are changing, tip five was to acknowledge your grief, because when things change, we grieve yet again each time. And tip six was, to engage the staff, treat them with respect, be kind, put on your best Sue Ryan, because she knows how to treat people like nobody else. Leverage everything you heard from Sue, because she really does know how to treat people. And hopefully that will put you in the right frame of mind to have that really forge that really great relationship with your care community team. Now we brought this up in the last episode. I want to bring it up again since it’s fairly new.
Just want people to know that for every episode, we have a matching blog. And effectively, the blog is where we’ve taken notes for you. So it’s a written version of the episode, a short written version of the episode. So look for the same blog number that matches this episode number. And you can go on our website and do that, or you can also find a link to the blog in the show notes. Now, if you have tips on how to be a great partner with your care community team,
please put those on our Facebook page or our Instagram page. The links are in the show notes. If you like this podcast, please share it with other people. Please subscribe to it or follow it. We really, really appreciate it. And as we say every time, Sue to you.
Sue Ryan
We’re all on this journey together.
Nancy Treaster
Yes, we are.
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