The guide to managing your Senior Living community during COVID-19

COVID-19 is tough on communities. In order to help them manage the crisis, we are centralizing tools, processes and content for professionals to deploy in their residences.

Managing life enrichment during COVID-19

Alongside physical safety, limiting residents' social isolation is one of the most important aspects of the locked-down community. Now that residents are cut off from staff, their friends and family, loneliness needs to be kept at bay. In this section, we’ll highlight activities & life enrichment strategies to ensure residents feel connected.

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Hosting activities across the dimensions of wellness during COVID-19

A feeling of wellness is based on more than physical fitness (although it is key). Across wellness, a balance of multiple dimensions is key:

  • Educational and intellectual wellness
  • Physical fitness
  • Emotional wellbeing
  • Spirituality and religion
  • Social activities
  • Community wellbeing

Keeping our communities active and their minds nourished, we can host multiple different activities. With technology, senior living communities can host an array of different senior living activities digitally.

Museums have digitised their offering, and seniors are able to visit amazing places from their couch: the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam or the Louvre in Paris are amongst the ones hosted on Google's Arts and Culture website.

Helping Residents Thrive Through Daily Challenges

Setting residents daily challenges, that engage them on several dimensions of wellness, can ensure they thrive during the lockdown. Having a sense of achievement, and purpose every day, is essential for mental and physical wellbeing.

To encourage participation, you can add prizes. Adding a dose of healthy competition, such as a scoreboard tracking all residents’ progress in these daily challenges, is also suggested. You can even go further, and ask residents to share photos of themselves completing a challenge - to create a fun photo board, or to share on a resident platform.

We recommend setting 3 daily challenges:

  • One physical
  • One social
  • One that can be either intellectual, spiritual, emotional or health & wellness

Make sure these challenges are fun, varied, achievable and can truly help a resident smile and enjoy their day.

You can find our resident challenge ideas and template here.

Virtual Activities

Hosting Virtual Live Fitness Classes in Your Community

Social Distancing doesn't have to mean social separation. Using technology helps senior living providers ensure their residents stay active and engaged.

You can organise a virtual fitness class in 4 simple steps:

1. Set-up the right distribution channel  

Make sure that residents are able to access the class - either through an in-room TV channel or their personal device

2. Find the right content and trainer

This can be done by local staff or by an external instructor. Here is  a curated list of senior fitness trainers.

3. Promote the upcoming class

Make sure residents are aware of the upcoming class, by including it in your calendar and distribute flyers.

4. Feedback Loop

After the class , send a short survey to the residents, asking them for feedback and suggestions.

Connect your life enrichment team to residents

Set up a digital events calendar and communicate easily between residents, family and staff. Start with Cubigo Essentials: free for three months.

Start with Cubigo Essentials

Managing senior living community communication and keeping families in the loop

Now that normal communication in-person communication is off the menu, communities are coming up with new ways of keeping their residents, families and staff in the loop. A combination of new processes and tools will ensure everyone in your community is at ease and up-to-date.

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Using Cubigo to keep families and residents in the loop

Cubigo is perfectly suited to enable digitized communication to both families and residents. Now that everyone has questions, structuring them into a single-source of informations and updates is a good idea.

How do I limit contact with residents, while staying in touch? How do I centralize information for my residents and their families? How do I structure the high amount of questions from families? How do I reduce social isolation? Learn more on how to keep your community connected and answer all of these questions in our blog post on senior living community communication.

Setting up a YouTube Live event with Cubigo

Now that group gatherings are impossible, technology is the answer to keep everyone engaged. With YouTube Live, you have a powerful live video event tool to connect residents and host all kinds of senior living community activities.

Once connected to the senior's Apple TV Cubigo app, users will be able to automatically join live events such as Town Hall's, quizzes and fitness sessions. 

If you're interested you can learn more on setting up a YouTube Live event for seniors.

The best technology and devices to use with residents

Whilst millennials and employees are working from home, and having a virtual social and professional life, from meetings to drinks - communities have to decide whether to resort to the traditional paper and pencil, or to embrace technology.

A common misconception is that seniors struggle to use technology. A  2017 Pew Research survey found that:

  • 67% of 65+ Americans say they go online and 76% of these users are online every day.  
  • 42% of 65+ Americans own a smartphone (up from 18% in 2013).
  • 34% of 65+ Americans use social media.
  • 32% of 65+ Americans own a tablet

And these numbers have only increase in the 3 years since.

Not only are your residents connected, they enjoy using the technology and developing their skills. So why not take this time to do virtual technology training sessions, encourage connection with their loved ones and learning new skills.

Learn more about silver surfers

Ensure everyone is in the loop with Cubigo

Cubigo Essentials will help your team to stay connected with residents, families and corporate. It's an all-in-one suite for the next generation of senior living communities. We're running three-months-free with no strings attached.

Start communicating with Cubigo

Ensuring sales and marketing of your senior living community can continue working during COVID-19

With the communal dining room closed, we need to ensure residents have access their food on time. Paper forms are increasingly difficult to distribute, so technology can once again help us serve our residents efficiently.

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Three ways you can maintain your senior living community sales pipeline during COVID-19

Ensuring new residents and prospects have a smooth experience during this crisis is essential. Assisted living professionals must keep three things in mind as they market and sell their housing to prospective residents.

Keep prospects in the loop

Ensure they have the latest info with regards to COVID-19 and the status of your community. Bad news is worse if its hidden, communicate in the open and ensure prospects know everything there is to know.

Demonstrate resourcefulness

This is a perfect time to show how your community wellbeing is guarded. Whether it's Zoom Town Hall meetings or balcony karaokes, show prospects how you're engaging the community, even in stressful times.

Stay in contact

Don't think prospective residents don't want to be contacted. Now more than ever it's vital to keep them in the loop of changes and reach out to them. Reach out to them and tell them what is happening and continue to bring them into the community.

Ensure everyone is in the loop with Cubigo

Cubigo Essentials will help your team to stay connected with residents, families and corporate. It's an all-in-one suite for the next generation of senior living communities. We're running three-months-free with no strings attached.

Start communicating with Cubigo
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