← Back to Blog

Ensuring a High Quality of Life: Questions to Ask Memory Care Communities

Caretaker reassuring patient at her home

If you have a loved dealing with memory loss, you and your family can find yourself faced with some tough choices. How do you ensure their safety while also providing the best quality of life possible? If this is your first time researching your options, including memory care communities, when it comes to figuring out how to find a good memory care option, there can be a steep learning curve. To help, here’s a memory care checklist to get you started including questions to ask and things to look for before you decide. 

Ask about Available Memory Care Therapies

Research is discovering that tailored therapies and treatments may help improve quality of life and even delay cognitive decline. Ask what memory-enhancing therapies are available in the community and how they can specifically help your loved one. Therapy options can include the following: 

  • Light therapy: Can be used to treat depression or improve symptoms of sundown syndrome – a behavior shift that worsens confusion and increases agitation in people with dementia during the transition from daylight to darkness. 
  • Art therapy: This activity can help stimulate the brain, improve communication and boost self-expression. 
  • Music therapy: Enjoying their favorite song or music from their era can help elevate your loved one’s mood, improve their overall wellness and spur memory retrieval. 
  • Aromatherapy: By using soothing scents like lavender to relieve anxiety and agitation while promoting better sleep, or energizing scents like citrus to promote activity, aromatherapy has several surprising benefits. 
  • Occupational therapy: This can help your loved one retain life skills like eating independently or dressing themselves. 
  • Therapy gardens: These could include a secure grassy courtyard with places to walk and sit. You may also find raised flower beds and vegetable gardens where residents can get their hands dirty. Such spaces may reduce feelings of isolation, agitation, depression and aggression. 
  • Cooking therapy: Preparing a meal can be an engaging activity that stimulates all the senses, taps into procedural memory and provides a relaxing, fun experience which is invaluable to overall well-being. 

Do They Offer Memory Care Activities Tailored to Individual Interests?

The best memory care communities also feature activities for people with dementia. That’s why it’s important to find out how communities engage with residents with both scheduled and free time activities. Here are some examples of typical memory care activities: 

  • Puzzles and board games 
  • Music programs and singalongs 
  • Sensory and tactile stimulation 
  • Pet visits 
  • Gardening 
  • Painting 
  • Cooking 
  • Outings to parks or community events 

Just because there are available activities, you should still ask questions about how they’re used and their purpose: 

  • Does the layout of the community promote active participation in daily activities? 

Why you should ask: Open common spaces and minimum barriers make it easy for residents to participate in various activities which will help them maintain their abilities longer. Communities with multiple rooms, hallways, levels and other distractions increase isolation and confusion, resulting in a decline in functioning. 

  • Are activities integrated for residents at all stages of dementia?  
  • How and who determines the appropriate activities for each stage?  

Why you should ask: All residents at any stage of dementia can benefit from activities. However, it is important to have activities that match a person’s capabilities in order to decrease stress and agitation for the individual with dementia. For example, early to mid stages are introduced to goal-directed and multi-step activities to achieve a just right challenge; in later stages, individuals are introduced to activities based on repetitive motion – folding towels, washing windows – and that integrate activities that are based on the senses like soft music and objects pleasant to touch. 

  • Are residents guided in a structured day or are they expected to follow their own schedule?  
  • Are activities lead by staff from start to finish?  

Why you should ask: People with cognitive impairment lose their ability to initiate, sequence and complete activities from start to finish without guidance. Isolation and other common behaviors – like wandering, rummaging, hoarding, resistiveness – can result when someone with dementia is expected to initiate and carry out their own day by themselves. 

  • How does the community incorporate television into their activities?  

Why you should ask: While watching television is a popular activity, it can cause challenges in the lives of those with dementia. Daily television content – soap operas, crime dramas and daily news – can increase anxiety and agitation because someone with dementia can’t always differentiate between fantasy and reality. Limiting TV viewing to designated times and specific content – old time music shows, relaxing videos, familiar sports – can cause less anxiety and agitation. 

Innovative Care for a More Engaging Life

At Cypress Village, our focus is on creating engaged, high quality lives for memory care residents from Alzheimer’s Association fundraisers to ElderGrow planters to family bingo night. Our memory care neighborhood features person-centered care that’s customized to your loved one’s unique needs. An important part of our specialized care is an innovative program called Heartfelt CONNECTIONS – A Memory Care Program™. To explore whether our memory care community is right for your loved one, use our Community Assistant chat feature or contact us here.