Placing a family member in a nursing home is painful and difficult, yet necessary when the medical and physical demands make other options unacceptable.

It is often said that the community environment and procedures are overwhelming and that the family must learn the new set of rules. Recently, communities have started understanding that it also had to listen to family’s requests but also that they had a lot to learn from them. Family satisfaction surveys are often used to assess whether the relatives of a residents are pleased with the service and the way their elder is being treated. Competition might be one reason for this change but another reason might exist as well: the need for better service for our elder and the growing need for resident-centered type of community.

Life enrichment and activity staff should not be excluded in such practices: they are the ones that have the strongest bonds with residents and interact with them on the most frequent and long term basis. Learning about each individual is essential to deliver fulfilling experiences and families are the place where one should start: they are the best source of information about residents!

Families usually help in filling questionnaires when someone moves in but an easy step would be to have follow up questionnaires and engage in a dialog with the family over what residents like or dislike

It is often said that when one meets with family, it is often to put off a fire or hear complaints – hardly ever to listen to praise or positive feedback. Why not put in place something to gather congratulations? It is easy to ask: what is it that you like the most about…? What do you think your mother likes the most here?? And so on… The reason why this is important is obviously to understand what one is doing well but also to be able to report this to the right person.

Another very important type of initiative is to include the family in some of the daily or weekly events in the community. It is not because one moves to a retirement home that they can not share what their day to day life is. The family could be invited to these weekly violin concerts but why not have them participate in one activity per day? At least, they should be given the option and they might even end up helping the staff perform the activity!

To summarize, the goal is to make the whole experience for residents better, and that is what families want. They are also becoming more and more demanding, including them as much as possible gives them more visibility; they can guide the staff when needed and explain that if their father doesn’t like going out on Saturday morning, it’s just impossible to get him out!!