The division of Therapeutic Recreation (TR) designs and coordinates restorative activities for all Silvercrest residents. Each patient's leisure history, routines and preferences are painstakingly learned, allowing staff to develop a focus on residual skills, and design activities to maintain and even increase those skills.
For those with the lowest function, sensory stimulation programs are instituted, using smell, touch and sound to stimulate and encourage. More advanced residents are led to learn from one another, from staff and from interaction with outside volunteers.
It is also the work of the Therapeutic Recreation staff that contributes most directly to the "community" atmosphere at Silvercrest, and that binds residents of all types together into one "family." Most activities are designed in a way that provides everyone the opportunity to participate in some way. Since consideration of the physical challenges of our disabled residents and the cognitive limitations of those with dementia always occupies our TR staff, Silvercrest events are designed to cast the widest possible net among our residents.
Activities
Silvercrest activities must reflect the many-layered diversity that characterizes our resident community. Our population's differences in culture, age and religion as well as in social circumstance and physical and cognitive ability, demand that a broad range of recreational programs be devised.
"Balloon-o-grams" are delivered to the most confined by staff who make regular rounds, bringing music, balloons and gaiety to residents' rooms. Every 3 months, bed-bound residents are visited by "mystery guests" (e.g. Mickey Mouse, Charlie Chaplain, etc.) who inject more variety and good cheer into the daily life of Silvercrest.
Little is more therapeutic than a warm visit from a canine friend. Pet visitation is made possible through the help of V.P. of Rehabilitation, Karen Dikeman.
Residents with fewer limitations can enjoy reading or web-surfing in the "Learning Center," participation in numerous clubs, and may even contribute to the content for Silvercrest's own resident-produced internal publication, "Voices of the People." (See Resident Area for details.)
Quarterly "Family Dinners" present dinner theater productions for all residents able to attend, and private parties can be arranged by TR and Nutritional staff for any resident and family, at any time.
Always seeking new ways to enrich the lives of Silvercrest residents, the Therapeutic Recreation department has even engaged outside experts to provide regular group and individual instrumental music instruction, (e.g. guitar, piano, recorder).
