Swindells Adult Day Care Program Provides Relief for Families
Every morning before work, Martha Young drops her 83 year-old mother at the Irene Swindells Center for Adult Day Services, a facility operated by California Pacific Medical Center (CPMC) and Institute on Aging (IOA).  

Without the day care facility, "I don't know what I'd do," says Young, a full-time director of a San Francisco bank. "I probably wouldn't be able to work."

Before she began coming to Swindells two years ago, Young's mother, who has early-stage Alzheimer's, "would not go out of the house, and she had stopped doing most of the things that had always given her pleasure," says Young. "My sisters and I were very worried and felt that she was kind of slipping away from us. We had no idea what to do."

Since then, her mother, who attends the day care center four days a week, has regained much of her old vitality and personality. "When she comes home, she is happy and energetic. She participates in conversations again," says Young. "It's like having our old mom back. She still has memory problems, but they don't seem to be stealing her entire life anymore."

Participants enjoy a Memorial Day BBQ lunch at the Irene Swindells Center for Adult Day Services.

Similar challenges face a growing number of adult children and other family members as the population ages. About 22.4 million households, nearly one in four, provide care for an older family member or friend aged 50 or older, according to the National Alliance for Caregiving and AARP.

Forced to juggle caregiving with jobs and other commitments, many family caregivers either stop working to stay home with elderly loved ones, while others hire professional caregivers to visit the home. Many end up sending their loved ones to assisted living facilities or nursing homes.

Adult day care programs like Swindells provide another solution: they enable members of the "sandwich generation" to continue working and meet their own needs while keeping their elderly parents at home.

"Adult day care centers are a wonderful resource and they make a lot of sense for many families who are finding themselves in this situation," says Joy Loverde, author of The Complete Eldercare Planner (Random House, 2nd edition). "The social opportunities and activities, even just eating together in a common environment, help prevent mental deterioration and feelings of isolation in elderly people, and it helps avoids the guilt many people feel when they put a loved one into a facility of some kind."

The Swindells center, located at CPMC's California Street campus, has "given me a break from the stress and worry of caring for mom," says Young. "I know that she is happy and in a safe place, which means more to me than you will ever know."

In addition to providing family members with peace of mind and a break from their caretaking duties, programs like Swindells give participants a place to socialize, develop new friendships and keep active.

The Swindells adult day center, which opened in 2002, offers programs Monday through Friday. The center offers a range of structured and individual activities - including games, exercise, painting, music and dance - that provide mental stimulation and promote physical health.

This program, which was developed collaboratively by CPMC and the IOA, also provides a variety of health and social services. Staff members monitor the health and diet of attendees and supervise the dispensing of medication. The center also helps to develop individual care plans that reflect each participant's needs and goals, and it offers support and educational groups for family caregivers. Participants are served lunch and nutritional snacks.

On most days, there are between 15 and 20 attendees at the Swindells day care center, which is equipped to accommodate as many as 35 daily participants. The program is geared for people with mild to moderate memory loss and confusion who are ambulatory and do not have significant physical problems such as incontinence.

Located one floor above the adult day program is the Irene Swindells Alzheimer's Residential Care Program, an assisted living facility for people with Alzheimer's and related forms of dementia who require 24-hour care.   

The residential care program, which opened in 1997, offers a secure but comfortable environment for residents with the medical advantages of affiliation with CPMC. The program employs a medical director who is a geriatric care specialist and round-the-clock nursing supervision.

As the only hospital-based residential program for dementia in the Bay Area, Swindells is "able to address medical problems more quickly" than other facilities," explains Robert Sarison, the program's manager. "Our staff has a trained eye to look for subtle changes in our residents' health that might be missed elsewhere. And because we're located in a medical center, we can get lab results very quickly."

The Swindells residential care program also features a staff of creative arts therapists who lead a wide range of daily activities.

The Irene Swindells Center for Adult Day Services and the Irene Swindells Alzheimer's Residential Care Program are both located at 3698 California Street in San Francisco. For information about the day care facility, see www.cpmc.org/services/senior/adult_day.html or call (415) 600-2690. For information about the Alzheimer's residential care program, see www.cpmc.org/services/alzheimers or call (415) 600-6392.

(This article originally appeared in the Summer 2005 issue of Bay Area Summit)

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