Memory Care
Memory care at Westbrook Park is a secure, supportive part of the community for residents living with Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia.
It has its own team, its own calendar and a smaller group of residents — so the day stays calm, the faces stay familiar, and there is always somewhere safe to go outside.
Is it the right fit?
Memory care is its own secure neighborhood inside the community, staffed by people who work there every day and know each resident by name.
The routine repeats on purpose. A day that looks like yesterday is an easier day to live in, and familiarity does more for someone’s confidence than novelty ever will.
It is the right move when the memory loss has started to affect safety — when someone is getting lost, missing meals or medications, or no longer safe on their own at night.
How we help
Everything here is set up to make the day easier — the space, the group size, the staffing and the pace.
Entrances and exits are secured, so residents can move around their own part of the community freely without anyone needing to worry about where they have gotten to. Staff are here around the clock.
Calm colors, home-like furnishings and rooms that are easy to recognize — a library, a game room and the courtyard just outside. Residents bring their own furniture and photographs.
Care is assigned so residents see the same faces rather than a rota of strangers. Help with dressing, bathing and medication comes from someone they already know.
Several short, planned activities through the day — music, art, gentle exercise, walking, games and time to reminisce — pitched at what each resident can enjoy today.
The programme here is built around the person rather than the diagnosis. These are the four parts of it.
Creating a sense of purpose, while preserving a sense of self.
The approach is person-centred: creating a sense of purpose for your relative while preserving their sense of self. With gentle guidance and reminders, a secure setting meets them where they are, so they can feel well known and go on flourishing even as the disease advances.
Planned sessions that support what someone can still do.
The day is a gentle structure of planned sessions, built to support your relative’s current abilities and preserve the skills they still have. A morning might open with a cognitive session: discussion and games that ask something of the mind. Physical activity runs through the week too, from exercise classes to walking groups and dancing. A routine like this helps someone feel secure in knowing they are right where they need to be.
A layer added for advanced dementia, not a replacement.
For residents in the advanced stages of dementia, support is added on top of the daily programme rather than replacing any part of it. In practice that means extra time set aside for grooming, activities that work through the senses, familiar music, and aromatherapy.
Education, connection and support for the people caring.
There is support for the family as well as the resident. That means educational resources about dementia care, events held here at the community, and the chance to build friendships with other families, learn how to advocate for someone who can no longer do it themselves, and support one another through a period that asks a great deal of everybody.
Included
One rate covers the apartment and the day-to-day, so the bills stay simple and there are fewer surprises.
A spacious apartment
Three meals a day
Housekeeping
Health and wellness programs
Transportation
Staff on site around the clock
Life here
Memory care runs a separate calendar — shorter, gentler and more repetitive by design, built around what residents can enjoy rather than what fills a timetable.
It’s printed monthly and posted where residents and visiting families can see it, and this month’s is here to read before you come.
Questions
If yours isn’t here, call us on (714) 775-6775. We’d rather answer it than have you guess.
Assisted living is for people who are largely independent but need help with parts of the day. Memory care is for people living with Alzheimer’s or another dementia: the setting is secured, the group is smaller, the staff are trained for it, and the day is built to be recognizable rather than varied.
Usually when memory loss starts to affect safety — getting lost on a familiar route, meals or medications being missed, leaving the stove on, or no longer being safe alone at night. If you are already awake worrying about it, it is worth a conversation.
Entrances and exits to the memory care neighborhood are secured, staff are on site around the clock, and apartments have emergency call systems. The courtyard is enclosed, so going outside doesn’t mean leaving somewhere safe.
No. There is no cure, and we won’t tell you otherwise. What a good community can do is help someone hold on to the abilities they still have — regular meals, regular movement, company, and a day with structure all help, and they are hard to keep up at home.
Yes, and it helps. Familiar furniture, photographs and belongings make a new room recognizable much faster than anything we could put in it.
Families are welcome whenever they want to come. We’ll keep you informed as things change, and we can point you to dementia education and support for carers — the diagnosis lands on the whole family, not just the person who has it.
Support increases with it, and it is added rather than swapped — the day keeps its shape, with more help and more one-to-one time inside it. In almost every case that means staying put, with the same people, rather than moving somewhere new.
The cost depends on the apartment and the level of care. Medicare does not generally pay for memory care, so most families use savings, the sale of a home, or long-term care insurance. Call us and we’ll go through the numbers honestly.
Visit us
Memory care is hard to judge from a page. Come and walk through it, meet the team, and see how the day actually runs — we’ll answer whatever you want to ask, including the things that are difficult to ask.