Interview with The Heritage - Verve Senior Living management, Jennifer Larose

I love meeting new people. I love finding out how I can fill their need. I love helping families. I love being there and seeing the dynamics and the love they have for their elders.

We are in an amazing location. West Kelowna is like the Hawaii of Canada, and we have a beautiful brand-new building, very much cruise-ship-style living at The Heritage. 

I’ve always been in some kind of sales. As a young mother, I would have small businesses at home, but I have a heart for people, so I was working with small children and in the school district. This position became available, and I thought this would expand my repertoire of skills and I’d still be helping people. So it just was a natural fit at The Heritage.

The Heritage is different. We have such a central location. The city has hosted many events here. So we’ve opened our doors to being the place where everyone comes to see Santa in December, or we’ve had amazing art shows. We won Art Supporting Company of the Year. Our craft shows are second to none; they’re fabulous. Our location really lends itself to helping the community come together. Our doors have been open to many community groups like anonymous groups, Rotary, the city, different things like that. Anything that enhances the lives of our seniors, we open our doors to at The Heritage. 

We’re right behind the public library. We’re walking distance to Tim Hortons and a movie theatre. We’re one block from Main Street and only a five-minute drive to our beautiful 83-kilometre-long lake. So it’s really the best of everywhere.

We do have a monthly residents' council meeting, so they get together themselves and decide what they want, and then they bring that forward to our meetings, which we have a resident meeting as well. All the managers are there, and residents can present their ideas.

We also have a suggestion box, so we’re always open to their ideas. What I always say is, The Heritage is their home, and I just work here. So they tell us what they would like and we very earnestly try to make their life their own.

I think our mild climate is one thing that attracts people to The Heritage. We have a beautiful spring and fall, and then our amazing summers. We’re situated in the heart of wine country. So our bus takes residents out on wine tours. There are probably about 30 wineries nearby.

Pontoon boat rides! We went on six last year. It’s wheelchair friendly, and we drive along the beautiful lakeshore all the way to Okanagan Falls to an ice cream factory there.

We also have the Gellatly Nut Farm, which is a heritage site that has 13 different kinds of nut trees that they can walk through. It’s a beautiful forested area. 

All of this valley is just lush with fruit. We have a fruit market that is very close by, and they bring all their produce. We have a little mini farmers’ market at The Heritage weekly. Being in the heart of such a lush green area, it’s really just so perfect to enhance a lifestyle that you have always experienced or maybe that you want to experience.

We have a really good mixture. Many young families live here, and mom has been living perhaps somewhere else in Canada, and the kids, the grandparents, or the grandchildren live here, and they bring mom from afar. We help them get situated. We have resident ambassadors who will take them under their wing and help them, have lunch with them, have tours with them, and get to know them. Those people have a whole new experience, but they’re so happy to be at The Heritage. Other people have lived here for a very long time.

The Reece family used to own and operate an apple packing plant on this ground, and we actually kept one of the beams from that building and put it in our signage outside. We have a memorabilia wall that speaks to that. People who have been here really look at it as a heritage site. They love to talk about, they remember coming here 30, 40 years ago for apples, and now the building is right here in their community that they grew up in.

We have had residents with the same last name as you see on the streets that we have here, so they really were founders of this community. They want to stay where they have always done the same things, visit their little shops, maybe, that they’ve always gone to. They’re so happy to stay in their own community. It’s lovely to see areas of friends moving here within the same year or two. So one will move here, and the others will come and visit, and they’ll slowly graduate here. So they get to keep those friends that they’ve had maybe for 30 years. It’s really a special connection that they get to keep.

Verve has an amazing dining experience. People get to actually order from a menu. It’s very much like a restaurant. Our dining room brings in superfoods, which I personally feel a passion for in my life. It’s so wonderful to see that carried forward. People who are concerned about continuing their healthy lifestyle can be assured that they’ll see those options on our dining menu. They’re identified on the menu by an icon.

We also have an à la carte menu. We have something called Living, Loving, Local. So, about Living, Loving, Local: we have local ingredients brought in from farms and acreages nearby, and those are incorporated into some amazing recipes. That is done at all 34 of our sites across Canada. If it’s blueberries, wild salmon, asparagus, we all look forward to that day and tell our friends and family to come on in. It’s presented in such a beautiful array in the dining room at The Heritage as well.

I love homemade soup. I’ve made it for years at home. I make it in the fall in huge batches and freeze it. And since I’ve worked at The Heritage, I’ve stopped because I can come to work and have homemade soup that’s just like mine. And I love that.

I think that’s one of the incredible things that can really set a person’s mind at ease, knowing that as they age, their physical or mental needs can be taken care of here. It’s just such a comfort to family and to the resident.

If someone moves in totally independent, which is great, they can use The Heritage like a big resort and enjoy all of our amenities, our heated saltwater pool, play cards or enjoy our gym, but later they may need a little help, and that help is provided by our 24-hour in-building care aide service. 

We have a licensed practical nurse here Monday through Friday, and she’s in charge of a host of care aides that are certified and that will answer your emergency calls 24 hours a day. So it’s such a comfort.

If somebody’s needs were greater since they moved in, they had a surgery or setback in health, they can just add those services to their suite. They don’t move to a separate area. They’re just serviced right where they are. So aging in place is a wonderful thing and a great comfort for the family.

Right now, we have our assisted living license. So even if you’re totally independent and you come here, which is awesome, but you do need some assistance in the future, in our assisted living services schedule, you can have those needs met.

Memory care or full care residential care we don’t have yet, but we are building next door in the future. We own the land, and the plans have been done. So soon, hopefully, we will have that ground broken and a new building next door. But right now, we don’t have the full care, but we’re planning on it in the future.

It’s very common for family members just to call to see how things are going, especially if they live out of town, and we welcome those calls. We want to work and network with them.

Interior Health is continually doing their assessments, or we get them involved if we feel that the need is there. We would never keep anyone who was at risk to themselves or others in the building, or if they were at risk of wandering. 

If care needs changes are a problem, we would see them ahead of time, because all of our team are always doing assessments. We meet at least weekly, and most of us daily, and we’re always updating each other on the status of our residents.

We would see that someone is not going to her exercise classes, so we'll check in to see what’s going on. It wouldn’t be overnight that we’d all of a sudden notice a difference, or if we did, then we’d know something was drastically wrong and maybe something that needed medical attention right away. We are always looking for signs of any kind of difference and checking in with family.

We're always communicating with families. We have a monthly calendar. We also send out a newsletter to the families. And anyone, of course, is welcome to phone our nurse at any time at The Heritage. 

I think it’s very important for everyone to be on the same page before they come in to look at something like this. Occasionally, we’ll get someone coming in and falls in love with the building and going home and says, "Oh my goodness, mom and I just visited this building. I want to get her in right away. It’s fabulous." And everyone goes, "Whoa, what are you talking about? I don’t want to put her in a facility!" But of course, that's not what we are. It’s a beautiful lifestyle of resort living at The Heritage.

It's important that the family be on the same page, looking at options, shopping around, seeing what assisted living is, what full care is, and having that understanding before they come.

They also need to have their legal paperwork in order when they start seeing mom or dad having a bit of difficulty remembering or getting confused, or maybe has a diagnosis of some kind of health issue, to get power of attorney. They need to get those things in order, go to visit a lawyer, and make sure that someone in the family is going to be the person to make those decisions if it’s not a group effort.

We definitely would want everyone on board with and are in touch with them to completely educate them on the process of mom or dad coming in and getting settled here.

Moving here from out of town, perhaps, and making the lifestyle change from a condominium or a home where everything has been inside of their home is different than living in a community where you have a lot of resources available to you, but you need to step outside your home or your room.

It’s a lifestyle change, and some people will feel like fish out of water. So, in that first month, we do a new resident welcome tea, and everyone who has just moved in gets to meet our ambassadors. We have, I think, nine or 10 of them that are just really friendly and want to help those new people. They know what it feels like to be the new kid on the block, and so we get to have tea and talk about where we’ve come from and how hard this month is. We don’t gloss over how this really is an emotional time, and it can have a big impact, and it is a stressful time, maybe involving downsizing, getting rid of some things, and creating this new lifestyle.

We also have visitations to new people's suites from each manager. We all feel it's very important to make that connection, and so they see where to go for what things they need. We give them a personal little booklet with each manager’s name and picture, so they can identify them when they see them.

When they go up to their suite, they’ll have their talk with them and tell us what is important to them and how we can best meet their needs. Then, as a group, we’ll talk about, hey, this person really likes bridge. We need to get them connected with the bridge club or maybe painting. Or this person really loves Aquafit. Let’s get them involved in that. We try to identify what need they have and how we can best fulfill that.

We are a family here. We really feel like a family, and I don’t know if people can understand that unless they actually experience it. When we’re doing the tours and people look at me and they say, “You know the names of all the residents?” Heck, I know the names of their families and their grandkids sometimes, and it really is a connection because we see them every day. We see these residents more than we see our family members. I only see my grandkids once a week, but these guys I see every single day.

So yes, we had one resident that, for the last six years, would be a special part of our life and would come down, especially in this last six months, with a joke of the day.

Sometimes I would be so busy when he would come into my office, the phone would be ringing, the emails would be popping up, and I would stop what I was doing and welcome him in. He would make me laugh so hard that I would be doubled over some mornings, and then it only took a minute.

He knew we were busy, so then he would be off to the next office, and I would hear the same thing. He brought so much joy to all of our hearts, and he recently just passed away, and I can honestly say he passed happily. He was a happy person, and he brought so much joy to all of us. There are so many times like that where I really feel like I have an extended family at The Heritage.

With more advertising, it’s out there, more people know how much fun senior living is now. There are occasional people still in the last year, but less and less with time. The word is getting out there that there is enhanced living. It’s not a place where you're going to be forgotten. The number one comment we have from people after they’ve moved into The Heritage is, "Oh, I should have done this years ago." 

My recommendation would be to come while you’re still active and you can enjoy all the good things that you’ve always done, and maybe even learn a thing or two that’s new.

We’ve had people take up painting that they haven’t done in 30 years. One gentleman was 92, and he stood up from his wheelchair and danced with one of our staff members. He said that was the first time since his wife had passed away years and years and years ago that he had danced, and it brought such a huge smile to his face. So, absolutely. We make good things happen here.

Look around, ask questions, don’t feel pressured, and when it feels right, go for it.