First Impressions of My New Best Friends

Best Friends Day Center, a service provided by Bridgepointe at Ashgrove Woods, is an adult day center facility for individuals that have been diagnosed with a mental impairment disease like Alzheimer's Disease, dementia, and more. This facility serves the adults with these diseases and their caregivers in Lexington and close surrounding cities in Kentucky. Best Friends serves the adults by providing them with a safe environment to spend their day and a way to positively stimulate their minds with Christian based activities like a sing along session, arts and crafts, and much more. The facility serves the caregivers by giving them a way to be released from the work of the continuous care they give daily.

Photo Credit: http://vancouver.ca/parks-recreation-culture/arts-and-health-project.aspx

From the Bridgepointe website
Photo Credit: http://www.bridgepointeassistedcare.com/

I attended my first orientation of the facility Friday September 11, 2015. When I walked in, I could not help but notice the bright colors and all the artwork on the walls. As I walked around the facility, it felt like a warm loving and caring spirit wrapped around me. Talking to the workers really brought home the concept they call the Best Friends Approach. This is the model of care that the Best Friends Day Center bases its work on. Learning to truly understand this concept and be able to work under this type of concept is what I look forward to the most, besides volunteering my time to help the adults there. This model of care was created to provide the individuals under the care with the best day they can possible have with the circumstances they are surrounded with. This approach to care requires staff and volunteers to display respect, empathy, support, trust, and humor to ensure that the relationship between the adults in care and the people working with them is the most compassionate. The Best Friends Approach to care is a concept I truly look forward to learning because by mastering this model of care I will have the capability to give the most compassionate and correct care in any healthcare work environment.

Lexington, Ky. 16th Apr, 2014. Volunteers Linda Whipple, left, and Sara Farmer, right, help Gelena Meade with Easter decorations at Best Friends Day Center in Lexington, Ky., on April 16, 2014. © Pablo Alcala/Lexington Herald-Leader/MCT/Alamy Live News
Photo Credit: http://www.alamy.com/stock-photo-lexington-ky-16th-apr-2014-volunteers-linda-whipple-left-and-sara-68863428.html

Best Friends Day Center does not have a website of its own or any social media. Therefore, as I go through my journey at this organization, I hope to learn so much about this facility and all the adults that partake in the service it provides. I cannot wait for my next visits with my new Best Friends to learn more about them individually. Hopefully, I made the same impression on them that my new Best Friends have made on me.

*Best Friends has a strict policy of photographs of the adults in care or the facility because of the HIPAA privacy rule. Based on this policy, none of the pictures in these posts will be of the actually individuals or the side except pictures that the newspapers had the right to publish. The pictures posted will be similar images to what I experience at Best Friends Day Center.