Interview with Sherwood House family member, Melanie Higgs

The caring staff at Sherwood House, from the manager to the housekeeping staff to the dining room staff. Everybody there has been, in my experience, consistently caring and kind, and they’ll go out of the way to help. For example, sometimes if I call my dad at night and he doesn’t answer the phone when I know he should be up in his room, I get a bit worried. All I have to do is call the front desk and they’ll say, oh, we’ll go up and check on him, don’t worry. Then they phone me back, he’s okay. He was just in the bathroom, or stuff like that. Little things, but I feel relaxed that he’s in good care.

It’s released me from a lot of worry and concern about caring for my dad. He is on his own, and if he had been in a house or his own apartment, I would be worrying every day because I’m the only daughter around locally. My other two sisters live far away. So it’s all down to me. Knowing that somebody’s always watching dad or there’s people around gives me great peace of mind.

For Dad, I think it’s the same. He doesn’t need to worry about anything. He knows he gets his lunch at 11:30, he gets his dinner, and he knows everything is a routine, and he’s really calm and settled at Sherwood House. Every day I see him most days, and I certainly talk to him every day, and well, today it was just, ‘I feel fine.’ It was the same yesterday. And that’s how I like it. People’s circles get smaller, and he just loves being there because he doesn’t have to think about anything.

The building actually was a big draw. My mom also lived at Sherwood. It’s kind of a funny story. My parents were divorced a long, long time ago, but life happens. They lost their spouses, and because I live here, they came here and both ended up at Sherwood for a while. My mom has since passed away, but Mom lived on the fourth floor. Dad still lives on the third floor.

One of the big draws for Sherwood House compared to other ones around town was the physical building. It’s beautifully decorated, homey, and tasteful. There’s no institutional feel to it. There’s a lovely big lounge with a big fireplace. My mother being a stickler for interior design, that meant a lot to her, and it meant a lot to me. So we first of all loved the building. Then we met the people, and we loved the people.

Getting my mom into Sherwood was a lot more difficult than my dad in that she didn’t feel she was really ready for this, but she was. When she saw the place and how beautiful it was decorated, she was, oh, this looks really nice. She made that decision herself based on how nicely it was decorated.

He came from a pretty unfortunate situation where his previous wife had put him in a place that was inappropriate. He came from a place which was really for patients with advanced dementia to Sherwood House, which was independent living. So he immediately felt a lot better there. Anything would have been better than where he was, but he’s totally happy and relaxed there and doesn’t want to move.

What appeals to Dad about Sherwood House is that everybody’s friendly. Although he has a memory problem, he has a real difficulty with names and faces, so he never remembers people’s names, but everybody’s okay with that. They all say, hi, Michael. Dad will go, hi. Then he’ll ask me who that was, but nobody cares. Everybody made him feel very welcome. He went from a very stressful situation to a very loving, caring situation after spending some time with us here.

He likes the independence. He likes to be independent, but he also likes to know that he’s surrounded by people in case something happens. We’re only literally seven minutes away. Having Dad at Sherwood House gives him a sense of independence, and he functions better for himself. When he comes here, he’s suddenly way more needy, and it’s actually better because when Dad’s in his apartment, and he does his little bit of housekeeping there, he keeps his mind active.

It’s a great balance between a caring, supporting environment, but the independence is good for him there. Although I wrestled with having Dad move there as opposed to living permanently with us, I think it’s a good balance. They have the emergency necklaces they can press if they fall over, and the hospital’s literally just up the hill.

This is another nice thing about Sherwood and the relationship with Vancouver Island Health Services and the home support. You can slowly ratchet up the kind of support that you need or your parent needs.

When Dad first moved in there, he was fine with his pills. He didn’t need anything. Now, six years later, five years later, last year, we instigated the pill service so we don’t have to worry about Dad missing his pills. For a long time, I did the laundry. Then I thought, "Why am I doing the laundry?" So we’ve got the laundry service going, so you can be very flexible about what kind of care they have there.

The caring is very much a big part of Sherwood House, but also the respect the staff has for the residents. Each resident is a unique individual, and that’s how they are treated. They are treated with respect. I really don’t like it when people talk to older people as though they were children. I hate that. Nothing like that happens ever at Sherwood House. Everybody is respected for their accomplishments and what they’ve done in their lives, and they’re celebrated for it.

There’s a newsletter that comes out every month. Every month they highlight somebody. They write about their lives, or they encourage people to write about their lives. They have a lot of great memory aids. On Valentine's Day, they had set up a table in the lounge, and everybody was encouraged to put pictures of their weddings or their sweethearts. Then people were supposed to guess, who is that? Who’s that? It was a really great way of acknowledging that people have had long, interesting lives, and they really do a lot of that.

The staff get to know the residents. They get to know their stories and their lives. There’s a real family feeling.

A weight has lifted off my shoulders. The peace of mind I have from knowing that if anything at all happens, they phone me right away is huge. We’ve had a couple of small health incidents. Dad fell once. He had a tiny little stroke. But the staff were great. They phoned, they had the ambulance coming, I came, we all met there, and everything was like clockwork. It really can’t get any better than that. I just feel like I can live my life with the peace of mind that Dad’s cared for.

From personal experience, I think Sherwood House is wonderful. They have a really good sort of process. You phone and you have a meeting with the manager. Then I would really encourage people to take their parents there. They can have a lunch there and sort of see what the dining room’s like, meet a couple of the residents. Everybody has to sort of feel like it’s for them. I can’t imagine how anyone wouldn’t feel welcome there, but I recommend it 100%.

It’s very important to go inside the different facilities and tour them. Children know their parents. Children know sometimes more than their parents in the sense that if, you know, my mom had a little bit of dementia, which she wasn’t really aware of, you have to think about what the place will be like from their perspective.

Look at the other residents and really think to yourself, can you imagine your mom or dad being happy there, and watch their responses. To the greatest extent possible, allow them to make the decision, even though sometimes you know better by this point because of dementia or memory loss or any other issues that your parents might be facing.

You really have to like the manager, too, because you’re going to be dealing with them on behalf of your mom or dad. It’s important to have a good rapport with the manager and the staff person at the front desk, because I deal with them a lot.

For us, we liked the building. We liked the facility. We liked the rooms. The rooms were nicely sort of spaced out. Each one has a balcony. So when I was with Mom and we were looking at it, it was definitely about the building.

Second of all, it was about the food. Mom was a great cook, and so food was very important to her. We had a few lunches there, and I had lunch there, and we just sampled the food. She liked the food. She liked the way the dining room had linen tablecloths, and all of these things were very important to her.

What really stood out to me was the other residents. Did they seem happy? Were they interacting? What was the feel of the place? Because they would tell me what life was like there. When we came in, I was really happy to see a lively group of women sitting in a corner chatting and knitting and having coffee. In the other part of the room, there were people watching a movie in the afternoon matinee. There was popcorn, and everybody looked happy. There were people sitting outside. It was summer, so there’s also a place outside where the very few smokers go outside and sit there, and they were having conversation and everybody seemed to know each other. That stuck with me because that told me that the atmosphere is good there. That was very important.

It was kind of fun in that when Mom and I were touring the rooms with the former manager, we looked at the display suite. The display suite had the full kitchen. Not all suites have stoves in them. Some residents aren’t interested in cooking, like many of the men there.

My mom being a cook, I told the manager that my mom loved cooking. So she showed her the suite with the stove in it and the whole kitchen. We really played up the fact that this was the best suite in the place because it was the distinction. My mom got, oh, I like that idea. So we kind of helped her make the decision that needed to be made because she really couldn’t stay in a very large house. The manager and I carefully convinced her that this was a great room for Mom and she took it.

The manager at the time was very understanding that some people are feeling a little trepidatious about the move, and you just kind of have to help them see all the benefits. She was really good at that without being overpowering. At the end of the day, my mom felt like she made the decision herself. So it helped me actually with that kind of psychology that you have to go through.

Our case is very unusual. It was extremely stressful because there were other issues going on in all of our lives at that point with his now ex-wife. There was ongoing litigation. That’s only relevant to the point where, again, the staff at Sherwood were very understanding of where Dad had come from.

It wasn’t simply moving somebody from their home, where they’d been happily living to Sherwood House. It was a very stressful move, and they were very good about that and reassured us that Dad would be safe there because he was in a place before where he wasn’t really. The staff went out of their way to actually help us, the family, with the stress of the situation, making it as easy as possible for us to just kind of get him in there quickly. There’s always a waiting list. It’s a very popular place. So we were very lucky that Dad was able to move in there when he needed to, and they were very helpful.

They made him feel very welcome, and there were pleasant surprises all along, like birthday cards from the staff, Christmas cards, everything. The cook there was British, and my parents are British. I was really surprised about how the cook kind of singled out Dad because my father’s born in Rugby, and he was born not far from Rugby. He would bring my dad the Weekly Telegraph, some British newspaper. After he finished reading it, he always made sure he gave it to Dad. They had a really good relationship, so that was a nice surprise. The cook kind of sought him out, and that was very nice.

It’s all gone so well for both my parents in their different ways. I really don’t think I would do anything differently. It all went so well. The people there were so nice and welcoming. The place is so nice. Both my parents loved it for their different reasons.

The one thing I didn’t mention that’s very important, especially with my mom, is that what’s really quite unique is that you’re allowed to have pets there. You’re allowed to have your cats. Not giant dogs, but you’re allowed to have pets, cats, and dogs.

My mom was very, very close to her little Cavalier Spaniels, so that was the key reason we chose Sherwood for my mother, because she would not think about going anywhere and leaving her dogs with somebody. Sherwood allowing pets is a key benefit for any elderly person who has one, because it’s very important company.

I probably wouldn’t have waited so long with my mom. With my dad, things happened in a certain way. With my mom, I struggled with the decision to try and help her out of her home to somewhere more appropriate. We did a lot of work. Mom used to only live five minutes away, so I was there a lot, and it was a lot of work for me. We were struggling to keep Mom in the house, and we really didn’t need to be because when she moved to Sherwood, she was so happy there. I felt like I should have done this a year ago.

If you find a place that you think is really great, don’t wait if you think your parents will benefit from the move. I just waited out of guilt because I thought, oh, I can look after Mom and keep her in her home. Sometimes it’s actually not the best thing for your parents because it’s a lot. She could no longer drive into town, and so it was much better at the end of the day. I should have probably encouraged her to move a year ago before she did.