Interview with Sherwood House management, Laura Griffin

The people. I love the tenants who live at Sherwood House and the staff. Very loyal staff, committed, and have been here since the opening 13 years ago, most of them.

I did my degrees in physio and occupational therapy and worked in a variety of settings, acute care, complex care, Fraser Health, Island Health, and was about to retire. I did for two weeks, and then the owner of Sherwood House called me and said, “Oh, we have a little manager position for you. Would you be interested?” So, I said I’d give it a little six weeks and here three years later. It’s great.

Happy people. It’s very home-like at Sherwood House. It’s not like an institution, not like a hospital at all. And there are pets. Love that. Lots of lounges, lots of conversations.

Our location is great. We’re right in downtown Duncan, two lighted crosswalks on either side of the building, so people can access, and it’s flat, so a few people have challenges with mobility, but they can walk to drugstores, banks, post office, doctor’s offices. That’s handy for them.

Our relationship with the town of Duncan is very good. Sherwood House is close to the senior centre. We’re close next door. We’ve had a few parking lot concerts lately this summer, and people are gathering around our parking lot, joining in. It’s nice. 

We do bingo, exercise class, which is very popular. There's Zumba, crib, bridge, whatever folks want to do. We have a great knitting circle. Ladies knit, raffle off afghans, and such for the Cowichan Food Basket Society.

We have a suggestion box, or residents can just come to the activity coordinator, Mary Ellen, or me, and say, “Oh, can we try this new activity, or can we suggest this?” So, we give it a go at Sherwood House. 

The culture at Sherwood House is pretty relaxed. Some things have to be a bit on a schedule, like our meals. We have three meals a day. But otherwise, people are coming and going. There’s family, as you say, the pets are in and out. Pretty relaxed atmosphere, I would say.

People like the location, where they’ve been residents of the Cowichan Valley for years, or their families are here. We’ve had a few move from the east to Vancouver Island to be closer to their families, and so there’s a lot of history.  

They’re often chatting away about, “Do you remember when this street in Duncan, that was there?” And so that’s probably the primary draw at Sherwood House.

There was a woman who moved in, a big adjustment, leaving her family home, but she met the table mates, started coming down for tea, coffee, and now she’s there all the time. Now I think she knows everybody at Sherwood House, including all the dogs and cats.

I think we’re one of the few communities that allows pets. We have about nine cats. Most of them are secret cats; they live in the suite. But then there’s Charlie, he’s the house cat, so he’s everywhere except in the dining room. About four dogs.

It’s a big change, to move. It’s hard sometimes to leave your home. You don’t want to leave your pets, your companion. So new residents can keep pets.

The residents do love fish and chips. That’s a popular one.

I love the Mandarin salad with chicken at Sherwood House.

The menu at Sherwood House is on about a six-week rotation. There’s a chef who’s been here since the beginning, and the people choose the day before at lunch what they want the next day for lunch or dinner. So, there’s always a choice and an alternate.

That gives us a pretty good idea of what the popular dishes are and what people want to see again on the menu. Of course, there are always themed dinners. We had Hawaiian Day and pineapple skewers and stuff. It was all of that stuff. It’s good.

Residents can also make requests personally. The chef knows everybody at Sherwood House.

There are 62 suites. Fifty-nine are one-bedroom suites, and we have three two-bedroom suites. We have quite a few couples at Sherwood House.

Everyone knows one another, and they care about one another. If someone’s in the hospital, they’re the first ones to get out the get-well cards. They do look after one another, too, in many ways.

Most of them are in their late 70s, 80s, 90s. We have a 99-year-old. They’ve been through a lot of common time together. What’s important to them is family, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren.

They love to share pictures with one another, and now it surprises me how many of them, unlike me, can use an iPad and stuff. So they say, “Oh, I got pictures of the new great-grandbaby, come and see this!” And so then everyone is looking at the new great little one at Sherwood House. It’s nice.

We have a close association with Island Health, our health authority. We have what’s called cluster care. If they were living in the community, they would have a personal care assistant come and help them out in their home. They’re living at Sherwood House, their home, so the same people help them with the shower assist, medication administration, and scheduled care needs. That helps them through tough times if they're recovering from something, or if that needs to be ongoing, that’s no problem.

If someone needs more care, we work with Island Health, the health authority. It’s not a surprise. It’s usually a gradual decline. And so we prepare and have the assessments done. Then, when something does become available for them, then it’s an easier transition than if they haven’t given it any thought or the family hasn’t.

I know most of the families, and because they live locally, we’re in touch by email. We’ve had email newsletters sent out, and if they want to be on the distribution list, we keep them connected that way.

If there’s a case where we think, "Oh, maybe a bit more support is needed here," then we talk with the resident, we connect with the daughter or son, and we have pretty good lines of communication at Sherwood House. 

The quality of life is better. They’re out walking, even if they’re using their walker, they’re out around the block. And they’re enjoying themselves more. The crib games, the bingo, and the pets are all very important for their quality of life. I think people are staying in their homes, be it at Sherwood House or their own home, longer and not as isolated.

We would love to have more real estate and to have gardens, but we don’t. But we connect with communities, so like our Providence Farm, which has community gardens. A couple of people would arrange handyDART and off they go and work in the gardens.

There are always people that we can connect with in the community, and new organizations. So the schools, they’re great to connect with children coming in, reading to grandmothers at Sherwood House. 

Have a tour. Just step in and walk around with me, and then they get the feeling. No decisions made today, but just plant the seed and see what you feel about it tomorrow.

Sometimes people come in four or five times, and it’s always the person who’ll be living at Sherwood House who completes the application and makes the decision. It’s their life. If they’re ready to move, they want to move, then that’s, we leave it up to them. 

We help new residents adjust a bit slowly and gently, because some of them have been living on their own for a long time and are not used to living within a community with 60, 65 other people. In the dining room, they have certain place settings, but we.switch it up, so they get to know different tablemates.

We have a welcome wagon. Residents who’ve been at Sherwood House for a while like to go shopping at the plant store across the street, Irene’s, and pick out a nice plant, and we make custom cards and people sign it and take it around and introduce themselves. Within a month, you’d never know that they just moved in.

Birthday parties are a big deal at Sherwood House. Every month, everyone who’s had a birthday that month, we have a chef make an elaborate cake, and we usually have entertainment, and we sing, have an afternoon of fun and good treats.

Then all the people who had birthdays gather around the cake. We sing a good happy birthday, and they all blow out the candles together. Usually a lot of candles at Sherwood House.

Check out different places and talk to people who live there.

I think four people from one apartment building moved in here or started to tour and look because they told each other, “Come and live here.” That’s the highest recommendation is if you know someone there.

But people stop and chat when they do a tour. I invite them for coffee, sit down with the other residents, and they ask them, “How do you like living at Sherwood House?”

I think there’s still a lot of negative perceptions of a “nursing home.” This is going to be the last home. I’m not going to have any fun. I’m going to be stuck inside and told when to do this and when to do that.

People have incredibly active lives here. Quite a few of them still drive and go out in the community. They go to their churches, the senior centre, the gardens, and out with their children. They go camping sometimes. It’s not like the old nursing homes of the ’70s or ’80s.