Flourishing Communities: The Pearl at Jamestown

Paige Mantel: Hello, and welcome everybody to our webinar today. Give everybody a few seconds to join. While we're waiting for everybody to join, would love to hear from where everybody is from. So you've got a chat box at the bottom of your screen. Go ahead and type in there. What town and community you're joining us from today.

Excellent. All right, let's get started. So, welcome everyone to our Flourishing Community Webinar Series. This series features senior living communities that are leveraging technology to create exceptional experiences for their residents, family members, and community staff. We have a full schedule set with community leaders throughout the country, running about every 2 weeks. I'm Paige Mantel, Chief Marketing Officer of LifeLoop, and I'm thrilled to be your host for today's session.

I think most of our audience knows LifeLoop but to summarize, we have one goal: helping senior living communities flourish. We've been serving the senior living industry for 25 years with our technology solutions that help more than 4,700 communities engage their residents, delight their staff, and connect family members. Our discussion today will run for about 30 minutes. We welcome your questions and ask that you please put those in the Q&A box at the bottom of your screen. At the end of the webinar, please complete the short survey to provide your feedback on today's webinar. As a follow-up, in a few days you'll receive an email with the recording of today's session, so you can re-watch it or share it with your colleagues.

LifeLoop recently announced our Communities That Shine Award winners, and I'm thrilled to have one of our winners, The Pearl at Jamestown, a Phoenix Senior Living community, join us today. The Pearl at Jamestown won our Brilliance in Engagement Innovation award based on their use of LifeLoop to engage family members in the ongoing care of their loved ones, and we'll dive into how they're doing that throughout our time together today.

Victoria James is the Director of Programming with Phoenix Senior Living, and Verna Law is the Program and Outreach Director at The Pearl. Welcome, Victoria and Verna. I thank you so much for taking time out of your busy day to join us.

Victoria James: Thank you for having us. We're happy to be here.

Verna Law: Thank you so much.

Paige Mantel: Our pleasure. So, I love to dive into everybody's story of how you came to senior living; such an amazing industry. So, Victoria, let's start off with you. How did you get into the senior living industry?

Victoria James: Yeah, you know, mine is a little bit of a mix. So of course, I started with a bit of a personal story, as I think a lot of us do, in that we had someone very special to us that kind of inspired that. But I actually began my career in senior living in an occupational therapy role. And I was working in occupational therapy, and what was happening was I was developing these fantastic relationships that would come to an abrupt end when it was time to discontinue therapy. And so, I really was left kind of hungry for that sustained relationship with the residents and the families. And so that's kind of how I segued into senior living. And it's really been kind of a dream career since.

Paige Mantel: That's amazing. That's amazing. And I know you have a special connection with The Pearl specifically; tell us more about The Pearl and what makes this community so unique.

Victoria James: Yeah. So, The Pearl is, you know, my original community that I was in before moving to more of a home office support role. And this community was really, you know, thirsty for a lot of support and engagement when I came into it, and we were really able to kind of inject a lot of life into it and get a lot of systems in place, one of which being LifeLoop and iN2L, and so it's really kind of our Cinderella story, of sorts, to really see kind of the turnaround that it's been able to make in the time that I've been able to be a part of it.

Paige Mantel: Amazing, amazing! And Verna, what was your journey to senior living?

Verna Law: Well, I had been a professional musician and music teacher prior to the pandemic and the bad news for me during the pandemic, which besides the obvious, was that all the music jobs had disappeared. And so, the good news is, it launched me into a job as an activities director at a senior community. I did a different one. And so, I had done that for a year, and it was an assisted living.

And so, during that, the interim year, I would call it, I went back to teaching music and performing, and then was called to The Pearl at Jamestown by our executive director to come and entertain the residents. And she kept calling me back, and then they kept calling me back to do some contract work to use music as therapy with the residents, and I really fell in love with memory care. And eventually, I came on full-time at The Pearl at Jamestown, and I absolutely love it. I have such a passion for those with dementia, and I'm loving my job.

Paige Mantel: I love that, I love that. And I know you have a personal connection to memory care; you want to share some of your story of what inspired you to get into memory care?

Verna Law: Yes. When my mother was in her early sixties, we found out she had Alzheimer's. And she was one of 12 siblings, and 10 of those 12 had Alzheimer's. So, our huge family was launched into this fight for a cure for this dreadful disease, at least whatever we could do to make a difference. It was a few years later that my dad was diagnosed with Lewy Body. And so, we were all thrust into the role of caregiver. And, although I didn't have the training then that I have now, a seed was definitely planted in my heart for caring for those with dementia.

Paige Mantel: Wow! Amazing stories, amazing stories of passion for this industry, and for caregiving, and to memory care specifically. Each of you are extremely well suited for your jobs there. The Pearl and Phoenix are lucky to have you.

Victoria James: I would say that we're the lucky ones, honestly.

Verna Law: Absolutely. I agree, yeah.

Paige Mantel: Love that. So, let's dive into what makes The Pearl such a flourishing community. Love to start with learning more about how you're delivering amazing resident experiences. So, Victoria, let's start with you.

The Pearl uses both iN2L content for engagement as well as LifeLoop for operations, and you were there before implementing the technologies. I would love you to walk through how you delivered engagement to your memory care residents before and after implementing that technology.

Victoria James: Yeah. I mean, when you are dealing with an all-memory care community such as The Pearl, the biggest challenge is dealing with such a spectrum of acuities with our residents. And that is always a challenge, regardless of what tools or modalities you may have. And prior to having iN2L, it was really a struggle to be able to engage our residents in a group setting, but that was appropriate for all of the residents that were present. And so that, in conjunction with there was just really some disjointed communication flow for our families, and so they were feeling, you know, ‘out of the loop’ a good bit when it came to the comings and goings within the community. And so it very much felt kind of closed in and kind of isolated.

And since we've brought in both iN2L and LifeLoop, you know, I've seen this huge transformation as far as the families. They're engaging, the satisfaction that they have with feeling more at ease, knowing kind of what's going on in the community. But also, you know, that iN2L content is just fabulous, for you know, engaging almost 50 individuals with varying degrees of dementia. So, you know, huge, huge turnaround since implementing systems.

Paige Mantel: Amazing great story. So, Verna, tell me, you know, with your job, what does a typical day look like for you and your staff using technology with the residents? And you know, how are you seeing residents and the seniors interact with that technology?

Verna Law: Well, just beginning of our day, we do these cognition exercises exercising their brains, we use the iN2L with that. And as Victoria was talking about, just the range of acuity, we feel like iN2L and LifeLoop offers so many options that we can support a crowd of various levels of acuity. And so, we'll pull up images or place songs that will support a particular exercise or something that we're implementing.

So there are lots of ways that we support what we're trying to implement. So we use, I like to use the paint option on the iN2L to form a whiteboard, and I guess it's the teacher in me, we do a lot of different fun games and things with the whiteboard. We'll write the date out, and I'll ask them about things of that era and gets a lot of conversation going. There's so many great features in iN2L for things about, you know, current things or things back in the past, that particular era. And then, later on after that session, I'll pull up the American flag and we'll recite the pledge, and we'll sing the National Anthem, and they all get engaged. And so, it's a really, it's a wonderful tool to keep all of them engaged, or as many of them as we can possibly engage.

Paige Mantel: That's great. What I love, what I'm hearing is, you know, from both of you, with all the different levels of acuity, being able to use the different types of content within the solution to be able to identify, okay for this person, they're really gonna engage with this versus that, and that kind of personalized care and engagement for each one of your residents.

Victoria James: Yeah. And I think you know, anyone who spends any amount of time in a memory care community knows, that you kind of can't set your watch to anything as far as, you can make a plan as best you'd like, but that plan kind of goes out the window every morning, because you just never know where the residents will be. And so to have a tool that allows you to very quickly pivot and kind of adjust your plans on the spot, and really meet the residents where they are in terms of interest and attention span, and all the things, I think that's also really big piece of why it works as well as it does in Jamestown.

Paige Mantel: Yeah, that's great. And I consider you both like power users, with over 6,000 pieces of content, being able to easily search, find what's gonna work, and just continue to use the endless amounts of different types of content for whatever situation facing you, right?

Verna Law: Yeah.

Victoria James: Absolutely, absolutely.

Paige Mantel: That's great. Now, staff is really important. I wanna talk about your amazing staff, and how is technology and LifeLoop helping them with their job. So, Victoria, as you know, staff turnover in the industry, is 85%. So how are you using technology to help both onboard new staff and provide ongoing training?

Victoria James: Yeah, so you know our organization, we span 10 different states. And so, you know, the fact that we do have over 50 communities spread quite as far as we do, it does require technology quite a bit to be able to reach all of the staff to get them the information that they need. And so you know, from an onboarding or training perspective, we do everything from webinars to training calls to recorded in-services. Of course, we have an online platform, you know, university-type courses and things also. But, you know, the biggest piece that I would say as far as helping our staff and kind of cutting down some of that turnover is just increasing the accessibility for support and resources. So, you know, our staff are not left in the dark. If they have an issue or question, we have a plethora of supplies available for them at their fingertips. It's just a matter of learning how to navigate to those tools. So, I think you know, technology really is kind of the name of the game right now.

Paige Mantel: Yeah. Yeah. Well, it sounds like you've got a lot of great best practices around onboarding, training, and keeping people very connected with all the tools that are available to them at Phoenix.

Victoria James: Yeah, yeah.

Paige Mantel: So, Verna, you have firsthand experience learning how to utilize iN2L and LifeLoop’s technology with memory care residents; what advice do you give your staff on using technology with residents, you know, that have maybe higher acuity levels due to cognitive decline?

Verna Law: Yeah, for some of those with a higher level of cognitive decline, we may do more one-on-one, and so we can utilize the iPad, you know, and bring up some of those features. And also the pictures, the photos in that we can put on the iPad, we can reach those who maybe don't come out of the room as often because of their cognitive decline, and we can go in there and show them photos of their loved ones even, or things that would really reflect on their past and just get them more engaged. But so you know, we're a very person-centered community and so we use both the staff and some of our higher-functioning residents to help engage those with these higher acuity levels. So, we're all in on this and we know which ones are more comfortable with the screen, and which ones are more comfortable with the tablet, and so we try to adjust that accordingly, and so that the topics are aligned with the residents’ interests and their skill sets, and it works out.

Paige Mantel: Yeah, again, just another great example of using that person-centered, personalized care to identify what technology, what device, what content to use to really help each individual.

Victoria James: Yeah, and it's not always the most time effective to take the extra time to learn both the staff and the residents. But I would argue ultimately, it is because once we do take the time and invest in learning, our staff comfort level, and our residents’ abilities and interests, and all those things, it makes for a much more seamless facilitation on the back end. So, you know, for those who would say, there’s not enough time, I would say that that's something that needs to be prioritized for them to do.

Paige Mantel: Yeah, that makes sense. Verna, when, you know, obviously all the directors at The Pearl are using LifeLoop, how do the different directors use it? Kind of the different use cases? And what benefits do they get from it?

Verna Law:Well, so LifeLoop really automates the workflow. And so, our departments outside of programming and the business departments are still fairly new at in this adoption phase; we've done this for about 6 months where we've introduced it to the entire director staff. So we're still working with our other departments to have a more active role in that. So again, primarily, the programming department and the business departments are really involved in it throughout the day.

But as far as what my responsibility is in using it and how LifeLoop helps in making the tasks more efficient, I might take attendance with it, or I will, each day I have to take attendance for each activity. And, of course, for the families that is such a great tool, because they can look on their LifeLoop app and see their family member when they're being engaged, or you know, how often they're doing certain activities and what they're more interested in. And then we can also look at those ratios and see, okay, maybe we need to do more of this particular activity. Because of the way that LifeLoop gives us those ratios, those numbers. And so, you know, I also, besides taking attendance, again, as I mentioned before, we're talking about photos that we put on LifeLoop. So the residents can view them. Of course, the families can view them, and then ultimately communicating with the families, and that has been a huge deal, because, instead of having to send out emails individually or text, or whatever, I can send blanket reports and information out to these connections, these family connections through LifeLoop. And it has really just streamlined everything and resulted in a lot more participation in some of our events and special things.

Paige Mantel: Yeah, that's great. And for those of our audience members that might be more aware of the iN2L content solution versus the LifeLoop operation solution, what Verna is highlighting is the LifeLoop operation solution really helps with managing attendance, checking people in, being able to communicate with family members, and the two of them at The Pearl, both products are in the same platform, working together to help be able to streamline those efforts. So just to clarify for our audience.

Yeah, so, and we just touched on keeping family members connected. It is so important. So one of the things, Victoria, that I loved in your Communities That Shine submission was that you mentioned out of all the Phoenix communities, The Pearl at Jamestown has one of the highest percentages of resident connections. Meaning family members that are linked in with their residents through LifeLoop. Of course that translates more to more family participation at events and volunteerism because of the ease of communicating weekly. You've seen your satisfaction scores increase since implementing the communication piece and keeping families abreast on a much more consistent and frequent basis. What is your secret to success of driving all of those great, you know, resident connections and family members being linked in with LifeLoop?

Victoria James: Yeah, to that, I really have to tip my hat to Verna on that one and just how consistent she has been with it. You know, she and I really started that process about the same time, as far as implementing the recurring weekly announcements and being really intentional with how much we are communicating with our families. And she has really developed such a fantastic culture over there in which there's a degree of trust, that the families know that anything that needs to be shared, will be. So here is this degree of, you know, they know to expect that weekly announcement, it shares what's coming up, and they feel included by default. And they are so excited about hearing of these upcoming events that it takes a bit of pressure off of them in terms of how to have a quality visit with their loved ones.

You know, depending on where their loved one falls in the progression of the disease process, it gets challenging for our loved ones to know how to visit and what capacity. And I think the fact that she shares so many opportunities kind of takes that pressure off of them. And they're more inclined to come during these events so that she's kind of directing it, and they're able to just enjoy it and kind of be a participant of it.

Paige Mantel: That is amazing and an amazing best practice to share with our audience. Verna, tell us more about your process and how you're doing this, and how family members, you know, are really engaging with the solutions and with their loved ones.

Verna Law: Yeah. Well again, because we are communicating with them regularly, they can see the activities that are coming up in that particular day or a particular week, any special events. Some of these family members who visit on-site during these activities, they play an active role in some of the features. And I love that, especially those who you know visit regularly, and they feel more comfortable with the community. So they might participate in some of the trivia games, they may answer, but they also may help in the queuing with residents, and I love that so much. And I can see as they get more involved in some of these programs, it also helps them to deal with the stresses and the ups and downs of being maybe a spouse of someone with dementia or a child who has a parent with dementia. It just helps them to be a part of that process. And we hope that they just feel, you know, that it's a stress reliever as well. They do enjoy the games. They enjoy all the things. They may be helping a loved one with another resident, not just their own loved one, but another resident with some interactive games as well, because we use the touchscreen. And so that has been a huge success, that they are a part of that as well.

Paige Mantel: That's wonderful. Thanks for sharing all those great, great best practices for everybody. Curious about showcasing your community's use of technology during prospect and family tours. How do families react or respond when they're, you know, checking out The Pearl and trying to make decisions about care for their loved one?

Verna Law: So we do use digital signage in our communities, and with the LifeLoop slide shows. They see those as soon as they come in, or at the concierge, they can see that slide show. It gives them a lot of information about the range of residents, the events, things about the staff—that's all listed on our slide shows, and then it shows what makes our community unique. And so that's an initial talking point along the path of this tour. And then from there, we give general information flyers presented to them and their tour packets. But we also have when they get to the dining room, they see that there's an exclusive menu on this TV that has the LifeLoop calendar, and it may include some other information as well. But primarily the menu.

And then my favorite is our 72-inch TV, which is interactive with all the bells and whistles of iN2L and LifeLoop, and I cannot tell you how much I love that thing. Because again, as we mentioned before, there's just a plethora of information on there and resources and tools. And really, it's hard not to find something on there, on this, you know, wonderful resource that we have through LifeLoop and iN2L. And then so when someone comes in, a prospect, and they decide that The Pearl at Jamestown is going to be their loved one’s new home, then we have them sign, right away, we have them sign the resident connection form. And this is key, because that plugs them into our community quickly, and then they can be informed of all the goings on in the community, right from the start. So that's a huge tool as well.

Paige Mantel: That's great, and the resident connection form is how they get them access to log into LifeLoop and get the great communication, see what their loved one is attending, and all of that. So it gets them immediately connected and it helps them feel like they're a part of the community. Yeah. Amazing, wonderful work.

Victoria, you started out with LifeLoop's operational communication solution. What drove the decision to add the iN2L content?

Victoria James: Yeah, you know, I think what it really boiled down to was kind of that discussion of just how expansive the acuity was for the group of residents that we were serving, and you know, at the time I was kind of a one-person show in the building, and it was like—look, I'm not willing to sacrifice quality of engagement, so we need to have something put into place here that is able to kind of help. Give me an extra set of hands, or 4 or 5, and you know—so that really was the driving force, it was a necessity, and it was really solving a true need. And the beauty of it though now is that it's such a luxurious item, but we still consider it a necessity. You know, the fact that Verna said earlier, that if you can't find something on LifeLoop, it's probably not turned on, if you can't find something on iN2L. So you know it's the beauty of it is just so expansive. It is so universal in who it can reach, and we have other communities in the Phoenix portfolio that also have the iN2L content who utilize it outside of a memory care setting. So, it's not exclusive to just individuals with cognitive decline. I mean, all of our residents can benefit and enjoy.

Paige Mantel: Yep, yeah, I think that's the beauty of the over 6,000 pieces of content that have been designed for all different levels of care from memory care to assisted living, even independent living. Great.

We have a question from the audience. And again, everybody, we have a few more minutes, so if anybody has any other questions, feel free to drop them into the Q&A box. But question is, how do you train and drive interest in technology for those residents who are reluctant to use technology? Any tips for encouragement to get them to try it?

Victoria James: Verna, you want to take it, or would you like me to?

Verna Law: Sure, I think just asking them, you know, and actually, Victoria taught me this. I watched her do this so well, but instead of being apprehensive about engaging with them, just ask them, just mention their name: ‘Hey? What do you think about this?’ Use whatever program it is, or whatever feature it is on iN2L, or whatever content. Try to find something in there that will connect them to that particular feature, and that again goes back to knowing the back story of your resident, you know, having that personal connection with them from the start, understanding them and being able to be that bridge into their story, and how it can relate to whatever game or feature or trivia you're introducing them to and implementing.

Paige Mantel: Amazing advice for our audience. Well, I see we're at the 30-minute mark. So I want, Victoria and Verna, I want thank you so much for your time today in sharing best practices and your advice and your learnings. I know the entire audience probably found a lot of value out of this session.

And thank you to all of our attendees and our participants today, we appreciate you engaging with us and hearing The Pearl’s story. Our next webinar will be on May 22nd with another Communities That Shine winner, Sitter & Barfoot Veterans Care Center. I hope you'll all join us for that, and for those of you that are interested in learning more about the LifeLoop products we discussed, please let us know by answering the short survey you'll see when you exit this webinar. Our team will be happy to follow up and schedule a personalized demo for you and your team. So thank you again, Victoria and Verna, and have a wonderful day.

Victoria James: Thank you so much for having for having us!

Verna Law: Bye-bye.

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