Relocating is stressful for anyone, let alone for a senior who is leaving a long-time home to move into a senior living community. Named a Best of the Best Award winner, Legacy Retirement Communities’ “Legacy Way Orientation” welcomes and engages new residents on a personal level, easing the transition to their new home.
ALFA 2013 Best of the Best Award Winner
Despite a warm welcome by activity directors and others, new residents at Legacy Retirement Communities would sometimes say they wanted to wait until they were “really ready” before engaging in community life. Occasionally, however, “really ready” would not come.
To help residents feel more at home from the day they move in, Legacy enhanced the role of its enrichment associates to bridge this “engagement gap.” “We don’t want the resident to get lost in there, between being a potential move-in, to being a ‘move-in,’ to being moved in,” says Tracy Haefele, enrichment director. “That’s when we decided to engage more quickly using our enrichment personnel.”
Within the community, the role of enrichment associates is to dream up atypical opportunities for resident engagement. They might sponsor a field trip to a Kansas City Royals game or arrange for interested residents to tutor English-language learners.
Enrichment associates meet soon-to-be residents in their home before they relocate. They are willing to help make arrangements, they interview newcomers about their lives, and they help them meet other residents with similar interests. On the first day, they’re likely the ones escorting a new resident to a special table in the dining room reserved for meeting new residents or arranging for a dinner tray to be brought to the resident’s apartment.
Legacy Way Orientation also involves having wellness staff offer a personalized fitness plan in consultation with the new resident’s doctor. “Many of the relationships formed through laughter and sweat in the fitness center will help them in other areas,” says Haefele.
Thanks in part to the new orientation program, the number of move-outs decreased by 20 percent last year. New residents now have an established relationship from the get-go with someone who can help them become comfortable in their new environment. “They know when they move in that they have that one person, that one face that they have to remember, and they have that one cell phone number that they could call anytime they need something,” says Haefele.
The above best practice was recognized as an ALFA 2013 Best of the Best Award winner. Do you have a best practice, product, service or solution at your community or company that is advancing excellence in senior living? The Call for Nominations for the ALFA 2014 Best of the Best Awards will begin in October. Visit ALFA.org/bestofthebest to read more best practices.
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