Wilder Foundation Opens Community Center for Aging in Saint Paul
Congratulations to our colleagues in senior services at the Amherst H. Wilder Foundation in Saint Paul. They recently opened their new Community Center for Aging, which is located at 650 Marshall Avenue in Saint Paul. Several of us from Ecumen had the opportunity to tour the Center last week. It's focused on an integrated, non-residential care model. Participants are able to access a broad spectrum of services based on their individual needs. On any given day, an older adult might work on a project in the art room, visit a health care professional, and consult an Alzheimer's specialist with their caregiver -- all under the same roof.
Changing aging is leading to new resources to empower seniors and their families. Congratulations to Wilder in their changing aging work. If you'd like to tour the Center, go here for future tour dates.
A Drug-Free Approach to Alzheimer's Care at Ecumen - Dr. Bill Thomas and Mick Finn Discuss
A drug-free approach to Alzheimer's care was the topic of this discussion between Dr. Bill Thomas, noted physician and author, and Mick Finn, senior vice president of operations at Ecumen. It's focused on Ecumen's Awakenings initiative to reduce the use of antispychotic drugs in Alzheimer's and dementia care. The interview is below and more information can be found at the The Picker Report on Aging in America.
A Family's Perspective at Ecumen Lakeshore on Loved Ones With Alzheimer's
Thank you to Julene and David Boe for sharing the experience of having a loved one with Alzheimer's in this story by WDIO-TV in Duluth, Minnesota. Their mother Norma is a resident of Ecumen Lakeshore's memory care community. The full story can be viewed here.
City of Apple Valley Embraces Aging as Part of it Vision for Community
Yesterday, Ecumen Seasons at Apple Valley opened in Apple Valley's Central Village neighborhood, bringing senior independent living, assisted living and memory care next door to the popular Enjoy! restaurant, in the midst of a larger pedestrian-focused neighborhood, which includes a Dunn Brothers Coffee Shop and The Shops on Galaxie. Kudos to the City of Apple Valley for seeing aging as an integral part of building a healthy community. It's a good model for other communities.
Ecumen Salutes Corporal Frank W. Buckles and America's Veterans
A salute to former Army Corporal Frank W. Buckles, the last surviving American veteran of World War I and the oldest known World War I era veteran in the world, who passed away yesterday at the age of 110. A decorated soldier in the Great War, he also survived more than three years in Japanese prisoner of war camps during the Second World War.
Like so many veterans Corporal Buckles returned home, continued his education, began a career, and along with his late wife Audrey, raised their family. He continued to serve America until his passing, as the Honorary Chairman of the World War I Memorial Foundation. We salute Corporal Buckles and all who have served our country.
Ecumen expanding senior living options with Ecumen Seasons at Apple Valley
Ecumen Expanding Senior Housing and Service Options in Apple Valley
Ecumen Empowers Seniors to Age in Place in Apple Valley
APPLE VALLEY, MINN. (February 18, 2011) – Ecumen, an innovative non-profit senior housing and services company, is expanding its senior living offerings in Apple Valley. Ecumen Seasons at Apple Valley will open on March 1st. 
Ecumen Seasons at Apple Valley will offer 134 well-appointed one-and two-bedroom apartment homes for seniors seeking independent or assisted living, where residents can add a la carte supportive services as they want them. A memory care neighborhood will feature 14 studio and one bedroom apartments, and will include an enhanced care neighborhood for residents with more intensive care needs.
The 220,000 square-foot community will offer a variety of apartment floor plans and community rooms on four levels. Amenities at the new Ecumen community will include a movie theater, pub, café for casual dining, restaurant-style dining, private dining room, arts studio, fitness center, library, learning center, salon with massage therapy, and more.
Ecumen Seasons at Apple Valley is located at 15359 Founders Lane in the 60-acre Central Village development, a pedestrian-oriented neighborhood that will include a variety of housing, retail, office, restaurant, and other uses. Residents will be able to move in to Ecumen Seasons at Apple Valley as of March 1st, though the grounds and the exterior of the senior living community will be under development into the warmer weather of spring.
“Our goal with Ecumen Seasons at Apple Valley is to create a community that was a vital, integrated part of the neighborhood,” said Julie Walton, leader of Ecumen Seasons at Apple Valley. “The Central Village neighborhood is growing into a vibrant multi-generational destination, and we’re extremely excited to be a part of it and to serve the greater Apple Valley community through a mix of services that empower seniors to stay in this great area.”
In Apple Valley, Ecumen also operates Ecumen Centennial House at 14625 Pennock Avenue, which offers assisted living and memory care; and Ecumen At Home, which
provides a full suite of at-home non-medical and medical services that empower aging in place.
“Our mission is to create home for older adults wherever they choose to live,” said Walton, “and our network of housing and at-home services allow us to deliver that mission in Apple Valley.”
Tours and additional information are available by contacting Dena Meyer of Ecumen Seasons at Apple Valley at 952-698-5300 or denameyer@ecumen.org.
Ecumen (ecumen.org) is the most innovative, nonprofit provider of senior housing and services, empowering individuals to live richer and fuller lives. Ecumen’s mission is to create home for older adults wherever they choose to live. With at-home services and senior housing communities, Ecumen envisions a world in which aging is viewed and understood in radically different ways. Minneapolis/St. Paul Business Journal has named Ecumen as one of Minnesota’s “Best Places to Work” for the past six straight years.
For more information about Ecumen Seasons at Apple Valley, please call 952-698-5300, or visit www.seasonsapplevalley.org.
The future of senior housing is NOT senior housing - What Do you Think?
Ecumen Discusses Intentional Multi Generational Communities and the Evolution of Senior Living
SHOREVIEW, Minn., Feb. 23, 2011 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- With the "Silver Tsunami" barreling forward, housing developers are finding new ways to meet the needs of aging baby boomers.
Independent living and assisted living are options already available, but there's another choice for seniors who want to remain engaged in the larger community. It's called "aging in community," and increasingly, data shows it's what people want.
"What we're seeing in America is a growing reverse from isolating seniors to integration across ages," says Steve Ordahl, Senior Vice President for Business and Fund Development for Ecumen, a nonprofit senior housing and services company in Shoreview, Minn. "And that means we're going to see more multigenerational housing communities, where aging is pretty much just a number."
AARP recently conducted a national study of Americans 45-plus. When asked about seven different community aspects and the level of importance they have for them, two-thirds of respondents said that being near friends and/or family and being near where one wants to go (i.e., grocery stores, doctor's offices, the library) is extremely or very important to them. Roughly half noted that being near church or social organizations or being somewhere where it's easy to walk are extremely or very important to them, while somewhat fewer said the same thing about being near good schools or being near work.
Meanwhile, a 2010 Architectural Institute of Architects Home Design Trends Survey of 500 architectural firms highlighted the resurgence of front porches as more single-family homeowners are looking to reconnect with neighbors.
"It makes sense that this mindset will increasingly impact senior living," said Ordahl. "You just don't wake up at 85 and say, 'I no longer want to be connected to people.’"
Multigenerational housing also makes financial sense.
Senior housing is comprised of many people who buy groceries, use the bank, eat at restaurants, and shop at Target. Also putting multigenerational housing adjacent to shopping and other community venues creates higher density and less sprawl. Rather than building senior housing "ghettos" as stand-alone places for old people, housing developers like Ecumen have to take a longer view, looking at how the housing will connect to the larger community and how it will be appealing to future generations.
"Five years ago, we were nursing home dominated, now we have a much more diversified housing portfolio and are expanding our community-based services, which the market is telling us they want," said Ecumen's Ordahl.
Examples of where housing has changed include Duluth, Minnesota, where Ecumen replaced a nursing home in a multi-generational residential area with Ecumen Lakeshore independent and assisted living, and a physical therapy and rehabilitation center. A child daycare will soon open within the community and the central café draws people from throughout the neighborhood. A new home health care service also operates out of the neighborhood to serve seniors in the larger community.
In downtown Minneapolis, Ecumen helped a neighborhood adjacent to the famed Guthrie Theater and just a short train ride from the new Minnesota Twins ballpark, to form a multi-generational membership organization called Mill City Commons. It is patterned after the popular Beacon Hill Village in Boston, Mass.
In another trend gaining popularity, college town retirement communities are forming across the country, with major university affiliations such as Penn State and the University of Texas in Austin. Ecumen is currently working with a West Coast college to evaluate integrating senior housing into their campus.
Another option is co-housing, where residents have their own living quarters, but they share common areas and eat communal meals prepared by residents at least part of the time. According to The Cohousing Association of the United States, there are more than 200 such communities in the U.S. One of the newest is OakCreek Cohousing Community in Stillwater, Oklahoma, which plans to break ground later this year on 24 homes, for people 50-plus.
Ecumen is now embarking on another iteration of age-integrated community development. Edward Rose and Sons, a real estate developer and property management company based in Farmington Hills, Michigan, has partnered with Ecumen to develop and manage a senior living operation within a multigenerational housing development.
The new 568-unit, "Irene Woods" development in Memphis, Tenn., is expected to break ground in June, 2011. It will include 140 senior rental units offering a mix of independent housing, assisted living, and memory care. The remaining 428 apartments on the site will be open to anyone, with no age restrictions and will be connected to a variety of shopping and other amenities.
"It's a new business model for us," said Edward Rose and Sons CEO Warren Rose. His 90 year-old family business owns and manages 56,000 apartment units across 11 states. "We saw an opportunity to branch off to a market we hadn't tapped into before."
Rose said he decided to move into multigenerational housing because his research shows that aging boomers who want to age in community are underserved in many markets, now and into the foreseeable future. Rose sees an undeniable opportunity.
"Rather than having centers of housing with just seniors living there, or just young people," said Rose, "it seems better to integrate them so they're closer together. It's a new thing, and I think it's going to be a big draw."
Dana Wollschlager, Ecumen's Director of Real Estate agrees.
Wollschlager envisions Irene Woods as an intentional community where families can stay close to aging parents, and even where younger professionals can find a job. "Our hope is that people might be interested in working with the seniors who may be living next door to them," said Wollschlager.
Many of the 140 senior units at Irene Woods will require 24-hour staffing, so there will be a need for all kinds of help, including chefs, maintenance people, and licensed professionals including LPNs and other certified nursing staff.
"We're creating an environment where you can live and work, all on the same 40 acres of land," said Wollschlager. "It's a community, one in which you can grow up and grow old."
Ecumen based in Shoreview, Minn., is the most innovative leader of senior housing and services, empowering individuals to live richer and fuller lives. Ecumen provides senior housing, at-home services, rehabilitation and long-term care services, and senior housing development. Ecumen communities employ approximately 4,000 employees and serve more than 10,000 people.
Seeking a Talented Storyteller for Ecumen's Social Media and Marketing Communications Team
One thing that is so critically important in senior services is storytelling. Our profession wouldn't exist without people. And every person has a story to tell (actually every person has "stories" to tell . . . ). Ecumen is growing, and we're seeking a talented person to join Ecumen's team in the area of communications. The job title says "marketing communications coordinator," but a large part of this person's work will be storytelling. If you'd like to apply, or know someone who would, please go here. It wil be a fun job.
A Newspaper's Lens into the Changing World of Aging and State Budgets
A lot has been made of the demise of newspapers, but they're so essential to a community's growth and evolution by highlighting ideas and trends community-wide, which can become levers for new ideas and, ultimately, action and innovation when people coalesce around them. Take, for example, the subject of aging and government costs. In Minnesota's largest newspaper - the Minneapolis Star Tribune - the last three days, you could see this issue twisting and turning toward a new place:
There was an op-ed article by David Olson, head of the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce, a major part of it declared Minnesota isn't prepared for an aging population:
. . . Changing demographics are at the crux of Minnesota's ongoing budget shortfalls. The warnings have sounded since the mid-1990s, but too many policymakers are deaf to the alarms. An aging population is demanding more public services, especially in health care. That portion of spending alone, if left untouched, is poised to increase 37 percent in the next two years . . .
There was today's Star Tribune article by Warren Wolfe, which outlined the hit long-term care would take in Governor Dayton's budget, with the Republican budget to follow . . .
. . . . When Governor Dayton chose to protect K-12 education and state aid to local governments -- two of the "big three'' slices in Minnesota's budget pie -- it set him up to have to turn to the third slice: health care and human services . . .
. . . Overall, Dayton's budget would save $775 million in human services programs, though the actual cut in payments is about $383 million because Dayton proposes certain revenue-raising strategies through increased surcharges on nursing homes, hospitals and health plans.
Of the net spending cuts, $87 million would come from Medicaid payments for long-term care -- $50 million, or 6.4 percent, from nursing homes, and $37 million or 11 percent, from the Elderly Waiver program, which aims to keep people out of nursing homes . . .
And then on the Star Tribune editorial page today new Minnesota Health and Human Services Commissioner Lucinda Jesson discussed managed care and getting the best value:
. . . to get better value for our state dollars, we must not merely review how we pay for care; we must actively explore new ways to pay for it.
Just as we, as patients, want to hear about cutting-edge best practices to keep our bodies healthy, so our state needs to move to the forefront when it comes to how we pay for care so we can keep our state finances healthy . . .
Demographics is one of our world's biggest drivers of innovation, because you can actually see the demographic change ahead. And in the articles above, you can see that in the world of changing aging, staying the same isn't an option. It's why a host of organizations in Minnesota recently came together to develop new ideas for aging and funding at the non-partisan Citizens League. Read their ideas here. It's why the report Prepare Minnesota for Alzheimer's 2020 was recently born. And, on a national level, it was why the CLASS Act is being shaped. We're all aging. And we all need to be part of shaping a future that is better.