We are dedicated and committed to doing everything we can to care of our residents during this time. Their safety and wellbeing are our top priority. Our team members have been working diligently to keep each person here safe at Lantern Crest.
Our Life Enrichment Team has been going around the floors every day with what we call our Activity and Snack Cart. This cart provides each resident with the opportunity to pick out either a delicious snack, fresh fruits, a puzzle, a book/audiobook, select toiletries, coloring pages or trivia pages. There are also painted rocks and pictures that local schools made months ago for our residents that we are passing out to help spread a little extra cheer! We have been delivering Daily Chronicles that include fun historical facts, quotes of the day, riddles and word scramble to provide the residents with something interesting and new to read.
We continue to deliver daily meals with options for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Our Culinary Team hand delivers each meal while taking the necessary safety precautions. Each evening when their dinner is delivered, they are provided with a menu of new options for the following day. We have asked our residents to fill out their selections and place the menu just outside their door. A Culinary Team Member then picks them up each morning and begins preparing their meals for the day.
We have also been taking and recording the temperatures of each resident every day. By checking their daily temperature, our goal is to have a chance to ask them how they are feeling, answer any questions they may have and to get a visual on them to assure they are doing well.
Our Marketing Team has also been pitching in by making daily phone calls to our residents, really to just chat with them! We are lucky to have very social residents living here at Lantern Crest and we knew the biggest challenge of protecting them from this virus would be the loss of their social interactions. Although many are taking it upon themselves to call each other and check in with one another, we hope calls from our Marketing Team would really help to lift their spirits.
And we can’t even begin to say enough about all the hard work our Plant Services and Housekeeping Teams have done along with their daily sanitation practices. They are going around to each floor and disinfecting doorknobs, elevator buttons, and all commonly touched surfaces multiple times throughout the day. They have also begun picking up trash from the residents’ apartments every day at 3pm to help them with any trash overflow. We understand that there are still things needed from outside the community that you, as a family member, must provide such as groceries, medications, etc. Our Plant Services Team has been a big part of taking packages, groceries, etc. up to each resident after they have been properly disinfected. We are happy to help in any way we can with getting these items up to each resident.
Our two nurses (Diana and Stacey) have been assisting our Independent living families in safely getting medications in and out of the community in efforts to assist with pill box set ups.
Moving forward, we have begun scheduling balcony exercises for our residents to participate in throughout the week. All they need to do is go out on to their personal balcony and follow along! By doing this, we hope to encourage as many residents as possible to keep moving their bodies and remain healthy. It is crucial to not only their physical health, but their emotional and mental health as well. We have also schedule Strolling Musicians to come each week and perform throughout the outside of the community. Residents will be able to enjoy this every Wednesday around 3pm from their balconies as well.
Since we have asked family members and friends to not visit during this crucial time, the Life Enrichment Team will be making themselves available to help with setting up FaceTime and/or Zoom calls with your loved ones here at Lantern Crest. In order to do so, please call Brittany Fay and schedule a day and time you would like to call so we can ensure we reserve that time to help!
Here are some things you can do to also help your family member get through this difficult time:
- Call your family member often
- We encourage you to work with our team members as everyone is trying to do their best to take care of our residents here at Lantern Crest
- Send encouraging notes and pictures that you can drop off at the front with one of our Team Members. We can deliver it for you
An essential part of keeping our residents safe is making sure that our team members at Lantern Crest are also being safe. To ensure that is happening, have implemented some Employee Safety Programs. We conduct daily trainings on hygiene, social distancing, proper removal of gloves, how to properly use a face mask, and more.
We have also implemented our Employee Shopping Program. This provides our employees a list of about 40 grocery/cleaning/toiletry items to choose from that will be delivered here to Lantern Crest for them to take home. By doing this we hope we can help provide our employees with the items they need for their homes and reducing their need to go to the grocery stores to minimize their risk of exposure.
We understand these are difficult times and we are adjusting to big changes such as: limited activities, no direct socializing, delayed events, and an inability to gather in our awesome common areas.
We will continue to serve each resident and provide all the services our residents need. Each one of our team members is doing a tremendous job every day to keep our residents as safe and happy as possible. On behalf of all our entire team, we want to thank our residents and family members for all the help and support.
We are here for you and we will get through this together.
With Full Hearts,
Kaan Ciftci
