Birthday & Holiday Celebrations

We are always taking care of our residents with love and quality. Celebrating every birthday and holiday is priceless for us.

Meals

We provide three nutritious home cooked meals and snacks a day.

Special diets prescribed by physician can be managed. Our caring staff monitors each resident to ensure they receive the proper nutrition and hydration daily.

Other Activities

Our Activities are endless…

Planning different activities allows our residents a break from the routine.
Mom & Dad’s House involves its resident’s in a variety of activities, such as Holiday Celebrations, Arts and Crafts, Beautiful Day Strolls, among many more:

Live Butterfly growth and release.

Variety of Crafts

Indoor and outdoor games

Pet Theraphy

Benefits of Pet Therapy for the Elderly
Pets make people happy.
They make people smile.
Who doesn’t love to pet or visit with a cute little puppy?
But not only are they fun…
they actually have shown to have some great benefits on the elderly.

 

Research has shown how beneficial pet therapy can be to the elderly, especially those who are living in a nursing home. Regular visits with pets, usually dogs, can have positive physical, emotional, and mental benefits. Physical benefits include lowering blood pressure, lowering heart rate, and reducing overall stress. Emotional benefits are reducing anxiety and depression, decreasing loneliness through increasing social interaction with the pets and their human companions. Consistent interaction with a pet has been shown to cause an increased release of serotonin and dopamine in the brain which can help calm and soothe a person’s body. This can be helpful for patients with Alzheimer’s dementia, as regular pet visits may help to decrease unwanted behaviors and calm their agitation. Also there are mental benefits that are a result of increased mental stimulation, whether it’s talking to the pet directly, asking questions to the dog’s owner or talking with other residents about the dog. All of these things help to keep the brain active.

If pets come to visit, it can help raise their spirits and give them a chance to tell stories about their pets. This can increase socialization. It can help them forget (if even for a moment) any pain that they are experiencing, any sadness that they have. It can help improve overall mood which can lead to increased motivation and participation.

You may find more info at:  www.adoptapet.com

Art Therapy

Memories in the Making®
A fine arts program for people with dementia

About the Memories in the Making®

Art program Memories in the Making®, introduced in 1988, is a signature art program of the Alzheimer’s Association Orange County Chapter.

It is a unique program allowing persons with Alzheimer’s disease or other dementia to express themselves through art.

 

The benefits of MIM can be that it:
• Improves self-esteem
• Serves as an outlet for emotions
• Increases attention span and focus
• Activates neurons
• Reduces isolation and provides opportunity to socialize
• Taps in pockets of memories that still exist
• Reconnects families

Music Therapy

What is Music Therapy?

According to the American Music Therapy Association, “Music Therapy is the clinical and evidence-based use of music interventions to accomplish individualized goals within a therapeutic relationship by a credentialed professional who has completed an approved music therapy program.”

Simply put, we use music to make your life better. Whether you need help socially, cognitively, physically, emotionally, or developmentally, music can help you get better…and music therapists are well-trained on how to do that.

What’s more interesting, though, is why it works. When used properly, music can be an incredibly powerful treatment tool. And not just because it’s fun, relaxing, and motivating, but because music has a profound impact on our brains and our bodies.

 

So here are my top 12 brain-based reasons why music works in therapy:

1. Music is a core function in our brain.  
Our brain is primed early on to respond to and process music. Research has shown that day-old infants are able to detect differences in rhythmic patterns. Mothers across cultures and throughout time have used lullabies and rhythmic rocking to calm crying babies. From an evolutionary standpoint, music precedes language. We don’t yet know why, but our brains are wired to respond to music, even though it’s not “essential” for our survival.
2. Our bodies entrain to rhythm.  
Have you ever walked down the street, humming a song in your head, and noticed that your walking to the beat? That’s called entrainment. Our motor systems naturally entrain, or match, to a rhythmic beat. When a musical input enters our central nervous system via the auditory nerve, most of the input goes to the brain for processing. But some of it heads straight to motor nerves in our spinal cord. This allows our muscles to move to the rhythm without our having to think about it or “try.” It’s how we dance to music, tap our foot to a rhythm, and walk in time to a beat. This is also why music therapists can help a person who’s had a stroke re-learn how to walk and develop strength and endurance in their upper bodies.
3. We have physiologic responses to music. 
Every time your breathing quickens, your heart-rate increases, or you feel a shiver down your spine, that’s your body responding physiologically to music. Qualified music therapists can use this to help stimulate a person in a coma or use music to effectively help someone relax.
4. Children (even infants) respond readily to music.  
Any parent knows that it’s natural for a child to begin dancing and singing at an early age. My kids both started rocking to music before they turned one. And have you seen the YouTube video of the baby dancing to Beyonce? Children learn through music, art, and play, so it’s important (even necessary) to use those mediums when working with children in therapy.
5. Music taps into our emotions. 
Have you ever listened to a piece of music and smiled? Or felt sad? Whether from the music itself, or from our associations with the music, music taps into our emotional systems. Many people use this in a “therapeutic” way, listening to certain music that makes them feel a certain way. The ability for music to easily access our emotions is very beneficial for music therapists.
6. Music helps improve our attention skills. 
I was once working with a 4-year-old in the hospital. Her 10-month-old twin sisters were visiting, playing with Grandma on the bed. As soon as I started singing to the older sister, the twins stopped playing and stared at me, for a full 3 minutes. Even from an early age, music can grab and hold our attention. This allows music therapists to target attention and impulse control goals, both basic skills we need to function and succeed.
7. Music uses shared neural circuits as speech. 
This is almost a no-brainer (no pun intended), but listening to or singing music with lyrics uses shared neural circuits as listening to and expressing speech. Music therapists can use this ability to help a child learn to communicate or help someone who’s had a stroke re-learn how to talk again.
8. Music enhances learning. 
Do you remember how you learned your ABCs? Through a song! The inherent structure and emotional pull of music makes it an easy tool for teaching concepts, ideas, and information. Music is an effective mnemonic device and can “tag” information, not only making it easy to learn, but also easy to later recall.
9. Music taps into our memories. 
Have you ever been driving, heard a song on the radio, then immediately been taken to a certain place, a specific time in your life, or a particular person? Music is second only to smell for it’s ability to stimulate our memory in a very powerful way. Music therapists who work with older adults with dementia have countless stories of how music stimulates their clients to reminisce about their life.
10. Music is a social experience. 
Our ancestors bonded and passed on their stories and knowledge through song, stories, and dance. Even today, many of our music experiences are shared with a group, whether playing in band or an elementary music class, listening to jazz at a restaurant, or singing in church choir. Music makes it easy for music therapists to structure and facilitate a group process.
11. Music is predictable, structured, and organized–and our brain likes it! 
Music often has a predictable steady beat, organized phrases, and a structured form. If you think of most country/folk/pop/rock songs you know, they’re often organized with a verse-chorus structure. They’re organized in a way that we like and enjoy listening to over and over again. Even sound waves that make up a single tone or an entire chord are organized in mathematical ratios–and our brains really like this predictability and structure.
12. Music is non-invasive, safe and motivating. 
We can’t forget that most people really enjoy music. This is not the most important reason why music works in therapy, but it’s the icing on the cake.

Medication Management

MOM & DAD’S HOUSE MEDICATION MANAGEMENT PROGRAM
There are prescribed medications from various doctors, orders renewed by pharmacists, changes of dosage or strength by the doctors, plus over-the-counter remedies. It can all be so confusing and possibly overwhelming. We untangle the web by having a set system of checks and balances that organize the medicines and relay changes the in health conditions of our residents to their medical professionals.

Here are some of the steps we take to add an extra layer of safety for Our Residents

1. For our resident’s safety, we check medication containers for content, correct labeling and expiration dates.

2. Our staff ensures that the doctors’ orders are followed.

3. We make sure that even over-the-counter medications have a doctor’s order to avoid the chance of adverse interactions.

4. Our staff works as a team to spot changes in health condition and inform their doctor(s) and family.

5. When a resident is having a tough day and resists taking his/her medication, our staff understands. But they don’t give up. Instead, with compassion, they use their professional experience and persistence to get the resident to take his/ her medications.

6. When our residents visit their doctor(s), we provide a doctor(s) with a list of current medications. We also manage the follow-up protocols of their doctor(s) and inform the residents’ families.

7. All of our medications are safely stored in organized locked cabinets.

8. Our staff follows in detail all prescription orders and logs in every medication given to each resident to ensure that none are missed.

Personal Services

Our staff provides:

Supervision and assistance with bathing, dressing, grooming, toileting, incontinent care, transferring from bed to chair, and other personal needs by our specially trained assisted living professionals. We provide all hygiene items of general use such as soap and toilet paper, washing, drying, and ironing of personal clothing. We provide fresh bed and bath linens weekly or as often if needed as well as the cleaning of each resident’s room.

Our staff aides with morning wake-ups and evening tuck -ins.

Mom & Dad’s House provides continuous care, supervision, and observation for changes in physical, mental, emotional, and social functioning.