Alzheimer's Service Center hosts fall festival

Well, as the need for memory care and caregiver support is growing, more and more people find themselves in the situation of being a caregiver. Alzheimer's services are also working to try to connect help with families. So today, the center is hosting a fall festival. Our Chris Rosenthal is joining us out there with a look at what's happening. Hey, Chris. Yeah. Hey, great weather here at the Alzheimer's Service Center down here in Clayton County in Morrow. And yeah, they're having this fall festival here really to get out the awareness of this facility. It's been here for decades and really serves a great need for those families, for those caregivers that may have relatives that have Alzheimer's. And sometimes you really just need a break, need a daycare facility for those folks. And that's exactly why this place is here. And I have Danielle Smith. She's a task commissioner here, but also a chairwoman of the board here at Alzheimer's Service Center. And thank you for joining us. And tell me a little bit about the services that this facility provides? So the Alzheimer's Services Center has been here in Clayton for over 35 years. We service our seniors that suffer with Alzheimer's and other related dementias. And right now we currently offer the adult daycare. So Tuesdays through Thursdays, all day from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., we provide those daycare services where our seniors have a safe place to be while their family members or caregivers are at work or simply just need a break. But Tuesday through Thursday, currently, the goal is soon and very soon to be five days a week, Monday through Friday, and ultimately to offer respite care, extended stay services for families that just need a vacation or maybe they've gone out of town for work training or what have you. Yeah, let's take a walk inside here. Sure. Get a little bit of a look. I mean, this is, you know, the history of this. I mean, it's been around for a while, but I guess during COVID, things maybe not quite as used, huh? Right. So considering COVID, where that affected our seniors mainly when everything first hit. So this place suffered greatly because seniors were not able to come into the facility for an extended time. So they suffered a lot. And some people didn't return after covid some of our clients that were in-house prior to covid the family members just they didn't come back you remember covid wasn't just a short stint that was some years and so this is now we're in this rebuilding and rebranding phase for the ASC and part of that is you can take on more uh more folks here huh yes yes and um you know people want to use this service i mean what what costs are there what sort of resources are there to to pay for this well we can have some clients might be private pay but we also take clients who have medicaid we have services in place for a sliding scale for those seniors that may not have the income to support them paying a full price for a service like this so the goal here is to ensure everybody in the community can benefit from the services that we provide here and it's an amazing facility you've had a chance i mean we'll walk and tour but it's amazing inside and out and a lot of folks i think since covid it kind of dulled down and folks just need to be made aware that we're still here the doors are still open and we'd love to have your family member here yeah this is the respite side over here we'll we'll take a look everything here obviously very secure because uh you know with alzheimer's patients yes obviously want to make sure they don't uh you know get away that That's right. Yeah. And so they have bracelets every day. They come in and they check in. They have bracelets that keeps these doors secure where they can't open if those bracelets are on them. This here is the respite care wing is what we call it. It's eight beds that we have available for future respite care services. That'll be for extended stay, not permanent residential. So it's not a personal care home. it's intended for respite care services only so maybe families might need a long weekend or a week maybe 10 days just to get away but they need to have somewhere safe for their loved one to be and so you have it there are two beds per room fully equipped with bathrooms that are ADA compliant able to accommodate our seniors to keep them safe while they're in those restrooms there's a full nursing station on this side of the facility that will cater to the needs of those respite care patients. Wonderful. A lot of really great stuff going on here. Thanks for the tour. Thanks for showing us here at the Alzheimer's Service Center. This is off of Mount Zion Circle Road here in Morrow. They do have plenty of capacity here as they're trying to get things back up get things back up and going here um and uh yeah you heard lots of ways to uh get involved and you know it really does provide a good uh service here for uh folks um you know caregivers who may need a little bit of help with their loved ones and they also take donations and they have a gala coming up in november yes so donations uh the website is ascga.org let me say that again And we look, we need folks to go to ASCGA.org. You can make donations there. You can make it a monthly contribution if you want to set it up that way. So we thank you in advance for that. And we have our annual holiday gala coming up Friday, November 6th at 7 p.m. It'll be here at the ASC. Friday, November 6th at 7 p.m. We'd love to have you come. Buy your tickets today. Thank you so much.