About LiveWell
Redefining dementia care. Your way.
What if the experience of dementia care was defined by what you can do and focused on your ability to thrive despite struggle?
For over 30 years, LiveWell has innovated with people experiencing cognitive change. Our name, philosophy and culture, campus design, and every connection between those who live, work, visit, learn, and engage with LiveWell has been shaped by people living with dementia self-advocating and requesting different levels of resources.
What LiveWell Offers
At LiveWell we offer services, support, and resources to people living with dementia, carepartners, and anyone interested in taking an active role in cognitive health and wellbeing.
LiveWell's Residential Community
LiveWell’s residential community is made up of Assisted Living and Skilled Nursing Neighborhoods. Residents enjoy life in spaces that are designed with intention to promote a balance of independence and safety. This includes access to beautiful and secure, open outdoor courtyards and gardens.
Our experienced team of dementia specialists provide an interdisciplinary holistic approach, enabling each resident to best adapt to the changes they are experiencing. We work together to create a personalized life plan that supports wellbeing beyond just physical health. Regular outings such as baseball games and trips to the shore, concerts, wineries and local fitness centers help our residents maintain their connections to a wider community while vibrant in-house programs focus on learning, wellness and creativity.
Neighborhoods continue to have some of the highest staffing levels in Connecticut. The LiveWell care teams are dedicated, compassionate people that go the extra mile to truly connect with residents in a meaningful way.
Education, Programming, & Consulting
The Resilient Living Center offers a variety of programming and education in spaces built with purpose and intention to foster an environtment that promotes wellbeing and cognitive health through all stages of cognitive decline. It is also be a destination for those looking to take an active role in prevention and maintaining brain health.
Consulting services are also available to organizations looking to bring LiveWell principles to their community.
LiveWell's Occupational Therapy
LiveWell’s Team of Occupational Therapists provide homebased services to support people living with dementia and carepartners. These evidence informed services are designed to help identify challenges of daily living at different stages of cognitive decline and provide adaptive solutions to help improve the experience of regular routines.
Services begin with a consultation to help the therapists understand individual needs then personalized care plans are developed to address individual needs.
Advocacy, Research, & Thought Leadership
We are thought leaders; we have received local and national grants to continue to expand the boundaries of ‘best practice’ here in our State and the Country.
We are the only care providers in Connecticut that work as dementia peer educators and thought leaders in this field. We bring this level of expertise and tireless curiosity to our work in residential care. Because of this, we have been the preferred choice in Connecticut for residential care for over 30 years.
Who We Are
LiveWell works to advance the wellbeing and inclusion of all people living with dementia to foster purpose, connection, growth, and belonging, through care, resources, thought leadership, and advocacy.
LiveWell's History
In 1992 a taskforce on Alzheimer’s and Dementia helped to establish the Alzheimer’s Resource Center of Connecticut as a pilot program to create unique environments that would serve to support people living with the disease in a residential setting in a new way. With an emphasis on designing spaces that reflected nature and other cues that indicated to people that there were in a residential space and not an institutional space. This transformative model aimed to offer people living with cognitive change spaces that supplemented their ability to comprehend their surroundings in a more meaningful way.
LiveWell's Philosophy
The LiveWell Approach® focuses on building a community where everyone who lives at, works at, and visits LiveWell feels seen, heard, and valued. In our 30 years of partnering with those impacted by dementia, we have discovered that living well includes finding practical ways to:
– Build Emotional Resilience
– Connect and Belong
– Maintain Purpose
– Learn and Grow
– Optimize Health and Wellbeing
Recognizing the worth and contributions of people living with dementia and ensuring their connections to others are amplified and upheld are key components of a community where they can actively determine the course of their lives and have access to the care and support they desire.
Educating the public and other professionals to foster a well informed perception of dementia and working to diminish the fear and stigma associated with dementia are also necessary in ensuring that opportunities to live well with dementia are realized and promoted.
Senior Leadership Team
| Michael Smith | Maley Hunt | Heidi Gil |
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| Chief Executive Officer | Chief Operating Officer | Chief Strategy Officer |
| READ BIO > | READ BIO > | READ BIO > |
Campus Transformation
Over 30 years of excellence, we have learned so much from the people that live with us, work with us, and visit us. That experience and input has given us a clear understanding that “living well” means more than having access to top notch services and resources that can improve health and opportunities for social connection, growth, belonging, and continued purpose. It means seeking out ways to invite contributions from people living with dementia to co-design and co-create a dementia positive community together. With that goal in mind, our campus has been transformed to include the infrustrature needed to bring a truly dementia positive community to life.
The Movement
Dementia Positive is the practice of recognizing the strengths, potential, and humanity of people living with dementia—and shaping our attitudes, communication, and communities to reflect that understanding. It’s about seeing the person first and focusing on what people can do, not what they have lost.
What Is Dementia Positive?
Dementia Positive is the practice of recognizing the strengths, potential, and humanity of people living with dementia and adjusting our attitudes, beliefs, communication, and behaviors to reflect that understanding. It is about seeing the person first and building communities where perceptions are shaped by what people can do, not by what they have lost.
Dementia positivity also extends to brain health and prevention fostering awareness, knowledge, and daily habits that support cognitive wellbeing across the lifespan. When communities embrace both inclusion and prevention, they create environments where every person and every brain can thrive.
How It Started
Nearly twenty years after LiveWell opened its doors as the Alzheimer’s Resource Center, the World Health Organization and Alzheimer’s Disease International called for a new vision for dementia policy and practice—one that incorporated the ideas of being dementia capable, dementia friendly, and dementia positive.
LiveWell took that call to heart. We recognized that the future of dementia care—and brain health—required more than programs and services. It demanded a culture shift: one that values strength, connection, and prevention as equally essential to living well.
LiveWell’s Dementia Positive Commitment
Our mission is to be a leader in the Dementia Positive Movement, modeling what it means to live, work, and grow in a community that prioritizes both brain health and inclusion.
Every innovation to our campus, practices, and programs is informed by people with lived experience of dementia—their insights guide how we design spaces, shape care, and promote wellbeing.
Through research, education, consulting, and advocacy, we are spreading what we learn and practice to communities throughout Connecticut, across the U.S., and around the world. Our goal is simple but profound: to build a world that supports prevention, adaptation, and purposeful living at every stage of brain health.
Leading the Movement
In our early years, LiveWell focused primarily on supporting the living experience of people diagnosed with dementia and their care partners. As our work evolved, we saw the need to go further—to invite people living with dementia as equal partners in shaping the future and to expand our mission to include brain health promotion and prevention for all.
That realization changed everything.
We began deep conversations with the people who live, work, and visit here. Their voices led to shifts in policies, practices, and design, and even inspired our transformation from the Alzheimer’s Resource Center to LiveWell. We came to understand that living well means more than access to care, it is about belonging, purpose, growth, and shared leadership.
Today, LiveWell continues to co-create with people living with dementia and those who care about brain health to build communities that are dementia positive, brain healthy, and prevention focused, places where strength is ce