As families gather for holiday feasts across Northern Kentucky, many are coming home for the first time all year — if not longer.
Dinners spent across the table from family can bring conversations of how each has been doing all year, and what changes marked the prior year. Sometimes, these conversations about changes are difficult, with adult children seeing firsthand how their aging parents are getting along.
Oftentimes, these adult children are faced with the turning tables of adulthood: once the ones receiving care, they are now tasked with taking care of their aging parents.
Maybe Mom forgot a few days of her daily medication, and it noticeably affected her demeanor during dinner. Maybe Dad tried to open a gift box tied with ribbon, and instead of pulling the fabric one side at a time, he blankly stared at the unopened gift, not knowing where to start.
And sometimes, when the care burden becomes too much, families turn to assisted living facilities to give their parents the care they need – whether it’s little things like help with medication, or more serious care for those with memory issues.
Either way, Victorian at Riverside in Covington is focused on helping residents be themselves. In fact, they’ve recently done something surprising:
They’re letting men in.
Nobody gets up one day and says ‘Gosh, I’m going to check myself into assisted living’
Carrie VanDerzee, CEO of Victorian at Riverside, sees a cadence to the end-of-the-year holiday visits and inquiries into the facilities services after the new year.
“We’ll start getting calls after the first of the year from people that are we were together over the holidays, and it’s things like, ‘Mom just wasn’t herself,’ or there are medication issues, or the car got all dinged up and nobody remembers how,” VanDerzee said.
These are the first-hand observations that adult children face head on after extended time away from their aging parents.
Victorian at Riverside focuses on providing solutions to delicate and sometimes uncomfortable situations. VanDerzee understands that it’s not always clear to families what the next steps could be.
“We try to focus on the feelings of our residents because nobody gets up one day and says ‘Gosh, I’m going to check myself into assisted living,'” VanDerzee said. “We’re really interested in the human aspect of it. We are very person-centered in our care.”
Home away from home
With decor that would give any high-end hotel a run for its money, Victorian at Riverside offers rooms that feel more like home.
“We had Grace Jones, who’s actually been in Architectural Digest before, come in and do the interiors and the furniture,” VanDerzee said. “We don’t want it to look like something you wouldn’t have in your home. Everything is based on a residential aesthetic. Colors, fabrics, everything. Our residents bring their own furniture to their room.”
Game rooms, a movie theater, gardens, and gathering spaces dot the campus, offering a variety of places to gather and build community. The grounds are meticulously maintained, with holiday themes, events, and entertainment scheduled all this month.
“We’re really small. So we liken ourselves to a boutique facility,” VanDerzee said. “We’re not church affiliated. We’re not affiliated with the Masons or anything like that. We’re not affiliated with a corporation because most of our peers are either owned by a real estate investment trust or REIT, or they’re the loss leader for a very large corporation who needs something to lose money on. And so we have been here 137 years in January, just taking care of a small amount of people, but doing it incredibly well.”
Indigent female inmates no more
Once known as The Covington Ladies Home, and prior to that, the Ladies Home for the Aged and Indigent, the facility recently underwent a rebranding initiative to better fit its current state and neighborhood (and better fit culturally in this current century).
A disparity in assistance for women in the 1800s and early 1900s was well-known but rarely addressed, and the institution was a beacon for women who looked for support and care. The flood in 1884 made the divide even more apparent. Mothers, daughters, sisters, and widows of the Civil War were dealt another blow from the catastrophic flooding that reached 71 feet, obliterating a large swath of Covington.
Then one woman stepped up.
In 1886, Covington resident Ellen B. Dietrick was an early advocate for equality and education for women, with the goal of providing care for women over the age of 60. Joined by other Covington women to form the Women’s Educational and Industrial Union, they sought to provide education, training, shelter, and care to women who could not afford it in Covington.
The home’s first residents, three “inmates” (as they were referred to in newspaper clippings of the time) and their matron moved in on Jan. 6, 1887. As the years went on, the number of residents grew, and they soon moved to their current location at 702 Garrard St. in Covington.
Hope for tomorrow: Memory care services to be offered in 2023
As the facility has grown and changed over the years, additional levels of care have been added as demand increases. Soon memory care services will be offered alongside assisted living and respite care services.
“We realized as a board and as an organization that we were turning people away that would call about the need for memory care, and now we’re able to offer a continuum of care,” VanDerzee said. “You can come in at the assisted living level but maybe when you progress, you have a place here with people you know.”
VanDerzee sympathizes with the residents and their families when the time comes to make senior care decisions with so few resources available in some neighborhoods.
“I can’t even imagine anything more terrifying than, ‘Well, you’re just going right to skilled nursing services’ because the facility chosen only offers that level of care,” VanDerzee said.
The new level of care will be provided by staff specifically trained for these patients through programs and certifications through the Alzheimer’s Association. And it’s not just the nursing and care staff who will be trained to work with these residents; the Activities Director is in the midst of an art-specific course for memory care residents through Miami University. VanDerzee is excited about the program the director will be planning from this education.
“It’s a very specific art program geared for people with dementia, so she’ll be certified to teach things as simple as using dried-up broccoli to paint with because you can’t manipulate the paintbrush, but you’ll get the same result and will be beautiful,” VanDerzee said.
The new kid in town: Admission is open to men for the first time in its 137-year history
Once the home for only “aged and indigent ladies,” the Victorian at Riverside is getting with the times by opening residency to men as well as women.
VanDerzee laughs at how long it took for men to be welcomed to the facility.
“I would see the calls we kept turning people down, and most of these ladies have been married,” VanDerzee said. “They have sons. They have grandsons. They know men exist in the world. This isn’t a convent-type of situation.”
Getting with the times was important to the Victorian at Riverside, and the change was made.
“Can’t go with the 1886 model of doing business,” VanDerzee said. “It’s almost 2023.”
A family caring for your family (including Sam, the cat)
If it feels as though everyone at Victorian Riverside is like one big family, that’s because it practically is.
“We are a very cohesive team,” VanDerzee said of the staff. “We have folks that have been with us full time for the last 15 years, some eight, nine, 10 years. We all work together. I even take the worst job, cleaning the cat box.”
Sam the Cat was a stray left behind when a neighboring home was left empty and they left poor Sam behind.
“I would see him routinely getting beaten up by raccoons outside,” VanDerzee said. “So winter was coming, and he was kind of standing by the door, so I put some food out. I kept doing that for like a week, and then another day I opened the atrium door so he could come in at night, then I put a bed in there for him, and then he’d go back out in the morning. One day we let him inside the historical building (without residents) and he went from being feral to having a concierge vet that comes in to see him. The ladies love him; he goes over and visits all the time. He’s actually listed with all the resident files in my office. Everybody’s alphabetically stored in the drawer, and in the front: ‘Sam Cat.’”
Be it the cozy decor, the world-class meals, the endless entertainment, the beauty salon, gardens, the sense of community, the expanded services of care for residents, or Sam the Cat; the Victorian at Riverside is an institution bent on creating a positive impact on the Licking Riverside District. [Best_Wordpress_Gallery id=”68″ gal_title=”Victorian at Riverside”]