| Jim Huinink
Editor, Comfort Life
April 2022 |
Stories and anecdotes emerging in transcripts from our Family Insights video series are simply beautiful. We look forward to releasing highlighted versions of these stories on profiles later this year. If you haven’t seen it yet, here’s a sample of what’s in store.
Collectively, the Family Insights video highlights tell a fresh new story of how retirement homes change people’s lives—specifically, the lives of the adult children tasked with caring for aging parents and who often feel overwhelmed. The message in these stories is sure to be heartening for family caregivers. They show how our member communities relieve care needs, loneliness, and family stress. People also highlight responsive service, how communicative members are, how they made the transition easy, and much more. They’ll benefit participating members, certainly, but also our membership as a whole.
These hand-curated highlights will provide powerful insight prospects will relate to, demonstrating the effectiveness of your community. Created using Comfort Life’s voice, the persuasiveness and influence will far outweigh a testimonial or review on your own website. We’re providing extended, in-depth content that draws out adult children’s stories. Look at some samples of highlights I’ve found so far.
Here’s Dwight Egerter, whose parents both live at Credit River Retirement Residence in Mississauga. It’s just one example of many that personally reflect the transformation members bring into families’ and seniors’ lives.:
Their lives have changed for the better… Sometimes in your home, it's pretty easy to lie on the couch, nap. It becomes pretty mundane. When you're in a retirement community, there are lots of things going on, there's things to do, so that really keeps them engaged and sharpens their mind. I've seen my dad's cognitive ability improve.
It’s been a big burden off the children's back as parents move into the retirement home. We've been able to sleep better at night.
Later, in advice to others, he says:
Put your fears at bay. You're moving your parents to a residence where the people really care about the residents, and they're going to look after your mom or your dad as if they were your own mom and dad. It’s really a caring family.
Highlighted Family Insight stories will carry more in-depth comments that other family caregivers will find deeply relatable. Fellow adult children will read and watch others put their thoughts into their own words. Here’s an exemplary comment from Fredina Elliot, whose mom lives at Bolton Mills:
As a family, it's hard to think about placing your mom in a home ... How she's going to adapt when she has been living in her own home and enjoyed the freedom of moving around in her property, and entertaining when she wanted, and cooking on her own. But I think that as much as that is part of history and you will always honour it and you'll always keep those types of memories in your mind and in your heart, there comes a time when it's not safe to leave parents in their home.
Later, in another highlighted excerpt, she shares how her mom has changed:
I think her demeanour is far more positive than it would otherwise have been. We could see that she was not doing quite well at home alone. We were constantly worried for her. There wasn't anyone that she welcomed in terms of staying with her full time to make sure that she was safe. In terms of being part of the Bolton Mills community, she is much safer than she's ever been.
Allow me just one more, for now. Here’s Nanaimo’s Joan Irving, daughter of a resident at Origin by Longwood:
I was concerned that she lived alone. She's been widowed since ‘07 and had her own friends and community down south when she was living in Duncan. And I thought that would be a bit of a transition at almost 89 to move into a new facility. You don't know anybody, but they've been extremely welcoming. The staff are absolutely amazing. The other residents that she's met … there's a lot of social activities that they have that they can join in, in group settings. Everybody is in the same situation. They've all moved from a community into this new community, and have been very welcoming … everybody's in the same situation … They're all coming from some place else and they're very happy to be there. There's a big social calendar. She plays Bridge. This facility has an incredible pool. If you want to, you can do aquafit. There's movie nights. They have a theatre. They do barbecues on the patio. So she's very much socialized into this environment. … The majority of the people there are widowed women. So she's got a good network of new friends.
I honestly wish I could share more now, but I know you’re busy. Suffice it to say that this is going to be lengthy content that presents a distillation of pure positivity. There are consistently glowing comments about how much better people’s lives are after moving, and equally glowing recommendations of member communities. Your prospects will find powerfully personal and profound reassurance as they research your community on Comfort Life’s third-party platform.
