Special promotional content provided by Agrace Hospice Care.
“I always wanted to help people.”
That’s what Kewana Jamison says when asked how she ended up as a nurse. And help people is exactly what she does every day as manager of the Agrace Adult Day Center on Madison’s west side.
Located at 1702 West Beltline, the center, which opened this past July, provides care and social activities for older adults from 7:30 am until 5:30 pm daily.
It’s a new area of service for Agrace, which has primarily been known for hospice care.
“Agrace really saw the need in the community when they were doing hospice that a lot of families needed respite,” Jamison says. “And so they thought this would be a great idea.”
The center primarily serves folks who have some form of cognitive impairment, such as dementia, but don’t need 24/7 nursing care.
“One of my main goals is when I meet a client and their family, I ask for a social history,” Jamison said. “What they used to do in the past, what they like, what they don’t like. And we do incorporate that into our activity schedule so they can be more engaged. We’re big on our social model here. We want people to be social and have a good time here. We try to make it really person-centered.”
The building once housed a furniture showroom, and the center now makes the most of those big windows to let in lots of natural light.
“We play lots of games, cognitive games. We do lots of physical games to keep those muscles moving, we play some card games, we’ll play some bingo,” Jamison says. “We’ll do dancing and listen to music. A lot of our clients like the fifties rock and roll era. So we play a lot of that music and they’re dancing, the people that can get up and dance, they get up and dance, people that move in their seats, they move in their seats.”
The clients also watched a lot of the Summer Olympics this year, as well as other sporting events, TV shows and movies.
A lot of the activities aren’t just for fun, either, but aimed at keeping the clients’ minds working.
“We do a lot of reminiscing activities … whether it’s in a game form or quiz form,” Jamison says. “We try to find a fun way to get their mind going and thinking and trying to remember things of the past, or even things in their life.”
Jamison comes from a background of home health care, and tries to bring what she learned in that setting to the center. Several years ago she actually stepped back from a supervisory role to return to direct patient care because she missed the interaction with patients.
“I really enjoyed the one-on-one and taking time with the patients that I had,” she says of her days working in home care. “You have more time to spend with them, talk to them, educate them. When you’re in a hospital setting, you have a lot of people that kind of compete for your time there. When you’re doing home health, you only can see one person at one time.”
She wants every client at the center to feel that.
“Since I’m in the manager position here, I can go out and talk to a lot of our clients. I do that with all of our clients just to get to know them. I really like it,” she says. “It’s really good and it keeps their mind going. When they can talk and reminisce and keep their mind going it’s a wonderful thing.”
So far the feedback has been positive, Jamison says.
“We’ve had a lot of different family members really just expressed that they’re really grateful that we are in business,” she says. “I just had one husband tell me that his wife really enjoys coming to the day center, and she’s eager to go in the morning. She’ll wake up early and be ready to go. Before she was coming here she didn’t really want to get up out of bed. Now she’s perked up with joy. She gets dressed on her own and she’s all ready to come to the day center. These families share that with us and it just makes our hearts so proud.”
Care at the Agrace Adult Day Center costs $77 per day, which includes breakfast, lunch and snack, as well as basic care and administering of any medications. Bathing and transportation are also available for an additional fee. More information, including photos and contact information, can be found here.
