Interview with The Village Langley - Verve Senior Living family member, Melanie Opmeer

The Village Langley is a very unique community. It’s one that we know is rare for North America, even. We know the history of the community, and just knowing that it’s specifically tailored for someone like my mom, who really needed that kind of place, I think it was a no-brainer for us. It was just a perfect match

Overall, it was very good. We had to make some adjustments, like anybody moving to a new place, but the staff was very helpful. They told us when my mom moved in that she would likely have a bit of a decline, and for us, it was the opposite. She just seemed to settle in, and it was such a peaceful experience for her for the most part. There were some adjustments, of course, but overall it was great.

There’s such a good community at The Village Langley for all of the villagers, the people who live there. It’s really a community. It’s a very positive community. The staff are very helpful, they’re very friendly, they’re very positive, and it’s just designed to be a community.

That’s the whole point of The Village Langley. It’s meant to be a community of people who have specific care needs, but who want to live as full and rich lives as they can. I think The Village really delivers that.

A lot of it is just knowing life is more peaceful because I know my mom’s in a safe and caring place. That was a big concern for us when she was living at her home, and she was actually living in one care home prior to this because she required some nursing care before there was a room available for her.

That institution was great. They had a great staff. They did very, very good work with her, but they’re limited by the way that their actual context is laid out. They have such an institutional, standard, typical care home setup. My mom had less freedom to move around and she had less interaction with people and such.

It wasn’t anything that they were deficient in; it’s just that they couldn’t offer the same context and environment. We noticed a great improvement in her situation when she moved in. We just feel that she’s in a safe and caring place. That’s the most important thing for us, that she’s well taken care of and that she’s going to be safe

My mom struggles with memory, and memory care is what she needs. For us, it wasn’t like maybe some people where they see their loved one slip into dementia, where there’s a loss of contact with reality. For my mom, her loss of contact with reality has to do with her memory, and your memory is part of how you function every day. She can’t remember things in the short term, and she knows that it’s very difficult for her.

When we got her into The Village Langley, she found that it was familiar. It’s her own bed, it’s her own bedroom furniture that she has there. The setup isn’t unlike what she would’ve experienced back home in her master bedroom with her ensuite and such. So it felt immediately more at home to her, more familiar.

Having the freedom to move around her space without fear of getting lost, and being able to move and go outside and do all those things that she would be relying on others for, brought a great deal of peace and lessened some of the anxiety and stress that she’s been experiencing since her stroke two years ago. It’s been a journey, and I think that we see in her a much more relaxed individual, somebody that’s at home and can feel that sense of home where she is.

She doesn’t say a lot because she doesn’t really connect with it, because my mom’s issue is short-term memory. She doesn’t remember being in the hospital after her stroke. She doesn’t remember the other care home or even the time she spent in her own home post-stroke. I remember touring it with her about a year ago, I guess about six months before she moved in.

Some family members of ours took her there just to tour it and see what she thought. Her comment was, “This seems like a happy place.” I said to her, “Do you think you could live here?” And she said, “I think I could.” That was a big step. I think that her perception is, in a sense, if you asked her day to day, she’d tell you she’s in a good place.

The one thing I can think of right away that’s really helpful for my mom is that she’s able to go outside. She can go up to the community center, have a cup of coffee with some of the other residents in her residence, sit on the deck of the house where she lives, venture down to the gardens, and see the goats from the back of her home playing in the field. Those are important things for people to feel that sense of being able to get outside and be outside.

My mom was always a walker. She spent a lot of time gardening. She spent a lot of time sitting outside at her townhome, where she lived for 25 years. To be cooped up inside in an institution with limited access to the outdoors would be difficult for her. So that amenity is a massive benefit. The freedom to be outside, getting fresh air, walking around.

When she walks on the main street of The Village, she’ll say hello to people who are walking there too, almost like it is a village, like you would greet people who live in your neighborhood. She’s definitely at home both inside and outside, where she actually lives in The Village. So that’s a major positive aspect of being there. It feels like a home, yes.

It’s troubling that she can’t connect more with the fact that that’s her home now, in a sense, because it’s not always familiar to her. Even when we take her out for the day and come back, she’s not quite sure. There’s a statue of a little girl sitting on a bench outside Hawthorne House, and that’s her key landmark for, “That’s where I live,” because she calls her Amy. So we find Amy, and we’re home.

I think the homelike atmosphere, the way it is such a place that caters to the residents’ needs, not the institution’s needs, is a key element that sold us on moving my mom into The Village Langley. It became very evident that it is that way there. Even little things that they do for the villagers, little adjustments they can make, they’ll make it if it helps them create a better space, a space of community.

The staff is very caring. For the most part, they’re exceptional. They really do a great job with her nursing care, with any medications or conditions or anything that arises with her. They’re very much in contact with me, so that’s very reassuring.

A lot of them seem very happy to be working in that context because I think it is a unique and special place. That creates a positive environment in and of itself, that it’s a beautiful place, that it functions very positively in how it’s designed. The people who are there are very uplifting, and they seem to have that sense of being very positive and caring around the residents. That’s what I’ve observed since we’ve been there.

I would say that it’s really important to tour it and ask every question that you might possibly have because it isn’t like most other residences for people that require memory care or assistance. I think it’s important to go in with a sense of discovery and just be willing to ask any question that you have and go and spend some time there.

They had community-type events prior to my mom moving in that they invited us to. We took advantage of those opportunities, the lighting of the Christmas parade, things like that, celebrations of some events that were occurring at the time before she moved in. We took her there to start to feel that community out and to become a part of it.

That really helped us to see how things were functioning before she moved in. My advice would be to take the time to get to know The Village before you commit to moving in there so that your expectations are clear and so that you can have questions answered. I found they were very helpful and very happy to answer any questions that I had.

With the move-in, there were a few concerns I had around communication around my mom’s care. As we did her move-in assessment, we found that she has actually very high cognition for someone moving in there. But her physical needs at the time were different. She was recovering from a fall and moving from a wheelchair back into a walker. So there were some questions about how independent she could be.

There were a couple of occasions where I was concerned about how we were negotiating that situation. But when I had concerns, and I made them known, they were immediately and positively addressed. We were able to figure out what she actually needed. We didn’t need to bring in extra care for her. She was able to function in the house that she’s at with the care level that was there.

It was a bit of an experiment because, as I said, she wasn’t a typical fit for the three levels of care that they have. They like to place people more with the level of cognition that is similar to those around them, rather than the level of physical care they may require. So it was a bit tricky to work out where she would best fit.

Once there was an opportunity to communicate and I took that opportunity, I found that the response was solid, really good. I was asked early on to meet with the general manager and some of the house managers after move-in and give them some feedback on what I had experienced. For the most part, it was very positive. They were very open to hearing what I had to say.

They’ve only been there since 2019, so it’s not like they’ve been there a long time. I think they’re very open to learning from all of the experiences that they have. There was probably that little bit of a hiccup there, but otherwise it’s been really good. There isn’t a prescribed, “This is how we do things here.” They explain, “This is how we do things here, but you give us feedback.”

If there’s something your mom needs, if there’s some way we can adjust to meet her needs and that works for us as well, then of course they’re going to do that. You can’t expect them to cater individually to everybody because that’s a community and we have to live together. But I do find that that is a strength of The Village Langley, that they are groundbreaking in a sense in this area with this kind of resident-centered focused care

I understand, as I’ve read articles and seen news interviews, that other places are starting to look at them to say, "Oh, that’s working, that’s something really special there, and maybe we can bring that into other environments." So I think that’s really positive.

I don’t know if I would do anything differently, actually. I think our family did our due diligence in determining what my mom needed and where the best fit for her would be. That wasn’t easy because things were changing in her life. After the stroke, there was recovery, then there were setbacks. Aging comes into it. Just normal aging is also a factor for any senior. So it was trying to determine what she would need now and the care she might need in the future.

As a family, we looked at some different options that would work, be possible for my mom, but there was nothing like The Village Langley. Once we saw what they offered, everything was measured against that. Nothing could compete with what they were offering in terms mostly of that lovely setup they have there that’s very home-like and very community-centered.

We made my mom a part of that process, even though we know she wouldn’t remember those places that we toured before, including The Village Langley. But we could see her reaction and see her response to them in the moment. That was helpful. The other thing that was really great was that within our family, we had really good communication and discussions as family members and were able to have an agreement all along the way in what was best for my mom.

That was the ultimate goal of everything we did for her, leading up to the process of finding a home for her at The Village. I can’t say that I look back with regret on any of it because you’re really treading on foreign ground. This is all new, and you don’t know what’s going to come. You have to sort of take it as it comes

I think that’s the great thing about The Village Langley, that once you’re in, my mom’s in the lowest level of care, and so if she needs more care in the future, then she’s able to, if we wish, move through different levels of care right within the same community. So that’s very helpful as well. It really has been. It’s such a stressful situation to walk through a traumatic brain injury and the subsequent results of that with an elderly parent. It’s good not to have to deal with a lot of regret on top of that.

I would say trust your instincts. Do all your homework, of course. Find out what is offered, what type of living context there is, and what services are offered. Make sure that you try out the channels of communication in advance to make sure that you’re feeling like, if I’m communicating with this organization about a potential residency, how is that actual process of inquiry going? Am I getting good feedback? Am I getting good responses? Am I feeling like this is a positive environment?

You need to do your due diligence in asking a lot of questions and going and looking at a lot of places. As much as you can, get an idea of what’s available for care for your loved one. Then, once you determine that you think you’re going into a certain place, take the time to think it through, and don’t be afraid to ask important questions, because this is a really important decision that you’re making about where your loved one is going to live.

Once they are actually moved in, stay connected. We often go as family members. I think my mom has probably four to five visits a week. Hardly a day goes by without a family member or a friend dropping in. That's really helpful for her as well. We’re there often, so we observe a lot and stay on top of things as you would for anybody that you know that needs your care.

I’d just like to say that I think at The Village Langley there are some very special staff members along our journey who have taken extra time to make sure that I understand things, that I’m comfortable with things, and how things are going with my mom. There are some really special people working there, and that gives me a great deal of comfort.

They’re not just showing up for work. They put their heart into the work that they do, and they care about the people that they’re caring for. And that’s the best thing you could ask for.