Vialia Active Adult Community – Rockside Shares a Note of Gratitude

This past year has been exciting for our residents and staff members. With all the struggles we see in the everyday world our community was successfully able to build a stable and successful team. This allowed our residents to build amazing relationships with our staff members building a deeper connection than we have seen in the past few years. We have been creative with getting our residents involved with more out of the community events that bring up childhood memories such as attending Cleveland Guardians games, Cleveland Browns training camps, movie trips and trips to see plays. This year excites me for the upcoming year and all the smiles on the faces we will see.

It is hard to break down some of the top memories from this past year with residents and family members as there are so many to choose from. I think the best moment for myself and the team that works in Assisted Living and Memory Care was our Family Night. COVID hit all of us hard and even harder to our residents who were separated from their family and friends for so long. I decided to host a family night to invite all our families to a St. Patrick’s Day themed dinner. This was such a huge success and gave a great opportunity for our family members to mingle and meet our leaders inside the community and staff members they hear about so often. It was also a great opportunity for me to meet family members on a personal level rather than through work. I truly believe building positive relationships with family members is so important in caring for their loved one. Sometimes we lose sight of that, and those relationships are something that I am very thankful for.

If I had to choose one more event in the past year that I am proud of it would be our trick-or-treat for the residents. For the past two years this has been an event that allows our residents to dress up in their favorite costume and invite their family and friends. It’s a great opportunity for family members to bring their children and spend some quality time with their loved ones and of course invite the grandchildren. I know this has a lot of meaning to our residents and families as it brings up fun memories from their past and gives them the opportunity to mingle with their friends in the community.

I don’t even know where to begin, we have some many strong leaders in our community. I would like to highlight our wellness team and their everyday effort they put in to ensure our residents are safe and have everything that they need. Tomesha and Shay stand out as great leaders who put our residents before themselves and give everything, they have day in and day out. There have been several times we have been short staffed, and they always seem to be there to give an extra hand.

I would also like to give a big thank you to Kim and David in our Culinary team. They are always going above and beyond their duties for our residents. On top of that they have built such a great rapport with the residents that most of the residents would consider them part of their family.

I could go on and on about our employees, but I want each and every one of them to know that I am so grateful for what they do every day not only for the business but for our residents and the relationships they have built with them.

We have so many great partners in our community who are always here for us when we need it. I want to make a special shout out to Leslie and Miracle City Hospice! Their attention to detail and services they provide are unbelievable! What separates them from everyone else is their relationships they create with family members of the residents. End of life is always a tough topic to talk about with anyone but the way they involve family members in this process is a beautiful thing.

I think I am safe to say that next year we may be going back to normal after COVID. I am excited to continue to build on everything we have accomplished so far this year and continue to add more events within the community and outside of the community. I am excited to give more opportunities to our residents with new community partners in therapy and home health.