Page 122 - Vibrant Living Scrapbook

Frequency
Sadly, another standard of practice has
been that one-to-ones with a resident occur only three times a week. Even if each visit lasts 20 minutes, that is only an hour each week of close human contact for those without relatives, friends or other outlets
for interaction. This is simply not enough! Please find ways to provide more. As mentioned above, don’t forget that anyone can provide one-to-ones...staff, visitors, family members, volunteers – even animals, children and fellow residents. In fact, what a wonderful gift for both residents when one, a very sociable person, is invited to provide companionship for a fellow lonely resident. It is beautiful to see resident-to-resident friendships bloom.
A helpful resource which appears to be no longer in print was Starlight, Starbright The Complete One-to-one Program. In it author Nancy Debolt showed how it is fairly easy
to enhance a person’s one-to-ones potential for obtaining commitments from family members, friends, other volunteers and
staff (including non-activity staff) to provide companionship for lonely residents. For instance, take the wife of the resident who brought the family dog to visit: staff asked for her commitment, for her to document
her visits on a simple form the facility provided and kept in the room and then
care planned how often the wife pledged doing this. Two other great examples are the volunteer who takes the resident outside or around the building for a “ride” each time she visited and the evening staff member who sings hymns with the resident every time he works. Commitment, care plan and documentation. It’s not too hard and what simple contributions toward vibrant living for the resident.
Staff Learning Circle Questions
Is there some meaningful engagement happening with our residents that is not being committed to, care planned and captured in some form of documentation that we could tap into?
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