Kingsley Adult Day Care Featured on WGSO Radio
Kingsley Adult Day Care was recently the focus of the popular radio program, WGSO's The Slow Money Show. Kingsley Adult Day Care program Director Jessica D'Ooge was interviewed by host Jean Paul Lagarde on November 12.
As our population ages, more and more Americans are in need of adult day care services. People are living longer and adult children are having to care for their parents. In the excerpt below, Jessica explains how Kingsley's Adult Day Care program can help busy professionals who are juggling the demands of those juggling caregiving and work.
Video Transcript
Jean Paul: What is Kingsley Adult Day Care, the program that you have and how does that differ from the Kingsley House?
Jessica: People know Kingsley House. It's a New Orleans institute. It's been around for over 120 years now. But a lot of people don't realize that Kingsley House actually houses an adult day care program. When people think of Kingsley House, they usually think of our early head start, our learning programs for children. But there's also an adult day care program that's been around for almost 30 years. It was started in 1973 and now we're on the new campus, across the street from the historic campus in the lower garden district.
Jean Paul: Jessica, as people are living longer and it seems that more and more children are actually having to take care of their own parents, does that create an opportunity for you guys?
Jessica: Seeing as our population gets older, more and more caregivers are struggling with the daily demands of caring for an aging loved one. Someone who may need a higher level of care then they are able to provide on their own in their home. But they're not at that level where they need to transition to a nursing home-type facility or something more intensive like that.
Having been a caregiver myself at a young age and having to balance work and school and things like that while trying to care for my parents, I understand that challenge and how it can really create barriers for people in their personal lives, in their careers, in relationships to have to manage an aging loved ones care.
We are able to provide a service where if you have a loved one that you're caring for that needs some extra care but they're not ready to take that next step, they can come to an adult day care program like we have at Kingsley. We provide nursing services, we provide meals. Everything that somebody needs to have peace of mind for the loved one during the day so that they can continue to work, they can continue to care for their kids and keep the household stable.
Jean Paul: Perfect. Describe a little bit, if you would, the program itself and what you offer seniors during the day. And then follow that up with, if you would, about the staff.
Jessica: So we provide a full calendar of activities. Every day there's something going on. We have health and wellness activities, we have social activities, we have volunteer groups that come in, we do wellness checks all day if they're needed. We have all different kinds of events. We have brass bands that come by. We have musicians from all over the country, not just the city. So there's always something going on for our participants. We have games every day, crafts every day, different kinds of projects. We do photography projects, a little bit of everything. The staff that we use for that activity, we have an RN that's on staff full time so there's always a nurse monitoring our participants anytime that we have people on site we always have access to an RN.
We also have certified nursing assistants that are there on staff all the time to help people with their daily activities. Just anything that they may need help with during the day. Then we have social workers that are on staff, we have everything that a person would need to be able to get through their day and have a good time. That's all part of what we do every day.
Jean Paul: And what are the hours of this program?
Jessica: We operate Monday through Friday and we have staff on site from 7:30am to 4:30pm.
Jean Paul: 7:30am to 4:30. Okay. How many, just curiosity question, how many are in a program like this?
Jessica: We have almost 70 enrolled right now. Some people come every day. Yeah. Some people only drop in every now and then. We have some people that have been in the program for as long as its been around. So 30 years. We have two participants that are 102 years old, they'll make 103 next year and one of them has been in the program for the entire time.
Jean Paul: Oh my gosh.
Jessica: For the whole 30 years. She loves it. She gets up every day to come to Kingsley.
Jean Paul: Well that just goes to show what the positive benefits are of keeping seniors engaged and how do you guys do that? What's your secret?
Jessica: Well I think that our best kept secret is the staff that we have. Our staff really know how to engage people and keep that engagement going throughout the day and how to personalize what kind of services people receive when they're there with us. Some of the CNA's have been with Kingsley House and working with adult day care program for that 30 years as well. So there's a ton of experience that we have in staff.
And then just the things that we've done in the past few years to expand the program. We moved to this brand new beautiful facility. We have these purpose built rooms that we use. A technology lab, we have a community room, we have a meditation room. We have our beautiful sun room and our outdoor patio where people can relax. So there's something to fit every need that we've seen so far.
Jean Paul: Wow. Just talking about one of the rooms, tell me about the technology room? What happens in there?
Jessica: We have it set up kind of as a mini computer lab where we have four or five workstations that are always on. People can get on the internet, surf the web, they can check email. We even have people, some of our participants that like to get on Facebook and chat with grandkids or whatever. So that's been a really cool addition to our programming.
We also set up a mobile gaming station where we use the Nintendo Wii and get people up and moving with the Wii controllers and things like that. So we'll do, I think the first one that was such a big hit was Cell Phone 101. So everybody would bring their cell phones and ask questions about how to text, how to get on Facebook. And now that we have the workstations, we'll do classes on Microsoft Word and just little things like that.
Jean Paul: Wow that is a wonderful resource.
You are listening to the Slow Money Show, presented by Faubourg Private Wealth. This is your host Jean Paul Lagarde. We'll be back.