Respite and Memory Care: An Option for Caregivers

 This is dedicated to the caregivers out there in Westman Village’s larger community. We know that it is a serious and important job to care for parents, partners, or extended family who require consistent, long term attention. For many of those loving and dedicated partners doing the hard work for their loved ones, physical and emotional burnout is a real threat to mental health and overall happiness.

It’s totally possible to live a happy and fulfilling life while extending care and support to your loved ones in need, and a critical ingredient in that recipe is balance. Specifically, balance in terms of personal time and self care for caregivers. After all, we’re not talking about a problem to kick down the road and deal with later. In many cases, a person’s physical safety hangs in the balance, so heightened attention and alertness become a norm in day to day life. Caregivers sometimes must stay with their loved ones virtually every waking moment to give them the care that they need, and it’s no exaggeration to say that such an arrangement can be fully draining in any number of ways.

Westman Village is geared perfectly to address this for both residents and non-residents. Journey Club’s Day Respite and Memory Care programs are interlinked so that temporary visitors and long term Village citizens alike can spend time in a space that espouses the dynamic, vital, and emotionally intuitive viewpoints of a Butterfly Care home on whatever schedule a person or their caregiver needs.

What this means is that you as a caregiver, whether you live in Westman Village or not, can bring your loved one to a space focused on caring for people, rather than helping. If you need either time for a vacation or even something as simple as a dental appointment, your family member will be in a place that genuinely interacts and lives side by side with them, rather than simply helping a body survive.

This type of care options can be a game changer, both for the person receiving the care, and for the people around them. We’ve written before about the benefits of disparate generations sharing space and time, so the Day Respite and Memory Care programs are just another level up in terms of incorporating a wide variety of needs and lifestyles into the Westman Village community. The overall attitude that the Day Respite and Memory Care programs offer to the Village is one of emotional sensitivity and understanding, rather than strict and categorical structure.

The result of that attitude is a presence in Westman Village and the wider community of engagement, sympathy and happiness, which provides concrete benefits to everyone around Journey Club in addition to those living and staying there. After all, why shouldn’t we meet, chat with, and generally live and enjoy ourselves with every member of our community, even if their needs are a bit more advanced than average? With this priority in mind, Westman Village and Journey Club are proud to stand out as a pillar of genuine, tangible support to people with advanced needs, their caregivers, and the families that love and care about them.