Redefining Life with Dementia

At LiveWell, the experience of living with dementia is defined by what you can do.

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“Before I knew it I had quite the arsenal of people to assist me as I took on dementia. ” ~ Bob W.

A Dementia Positive Community

We aren’t just providing care, we’re leading a dementia positive movement that is changing the way people think, act, and talk about dementia and the people affected by it. LiveWell is the lead educator in Connecticut advancing Dementia Friendly initiatives.

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The Empowering Partnerships Network

LiveWell is much more than a residential community. This campus is a gathering place for anyone touched by dementia and where the voices and contributions of people living with dementia are included and amplified to make an impact that matters through research, policy, and practice.

The Empowering Partnership Network (EPN) is a diverse peer network of partners who are living with dementia, have experience as care partners, and allies who are leading a movement to promote cognitive health and transform the experience of living with dementia.

Forty eight years ago, Carol and Janet fell in love and began to share their lives together. When Carol was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease they discovered LiveWell through a friend. Through LiveWell they have made new friends, taken classes, and transformed their experience of living with dementia.  Janet and Carol joined the Empowering Partnership Network and are now on the board of directors.

Carol and Janet invite you to become partners in this network.  Whether you are someone living with cognitive change, a care partner, a professional in the field, or someone who just wants to make a difference- all are welcome! It will take all of us to create the movement!

Join the Movement

WHAT YOU WILL EXPERIENCE

You will experience connection, belonging, and will be included, not just in the community, but in the decision-making. Our work is in human development. Our partners and teachers are people who are living with cognitive changes and the people who care about them and for them. We are constantly exploring how people living with dementia can thrive as they age.

Live here, live well

We offer a variety of living and care options for different needs, situations, and lifestyles. Our dementia positive philosophy promotes freedom, safety, and the ability to live an engaged life.

Interdisciplinary Approach

Our houses and neighborhoods are co-led by compassionate and creative experts in nursing, occupational therapy, social work, and engagement. Every resident benefits from a balanced, holistic approach to adapting to physical, cognitive, social, and emotional changes.

In a setting that is right for you

All settings include multiple dining options, tiers of service to assist with activities of daily living, and supports you will not find in memory care communities, like a 24/7 onsite registered nurse, a registered dietician, on-campus physician services, and membership to the Resilient Living Center.

An Unparalleled Freedom

We believe that safety and autonomy can coexist by balancing risk. With the innovative use of architecture and adaptive technology, you will experience unmatched freedom and access to the outdoors and an entire campus designed to foster connection, belonging, exploration, purpose, and engagement.

Nothing about you, without you

For over 30 years, LiveWell has innovated with people experiencing cognitive change. Together we are building a community and a movement that invites everyone to contribute their personalities, strengths, abilities, and voices to change the way people across the country view dementia.

Collaborative

In the River Homes, neighbors are invited to collaborate with one another to determine how they want to live, their house values, and daily routines right down to the grocery list. Our dedicated team ensures that residents have the support they need 24/7/365.

CAMPUS 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 support people living with the disease in a residential setting in a new way. In designing the original campus, there was an emphasis put on designing spaces that reflected nature and other cues that indicated to people that they were in a residential space, 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.

Back then, the goal was to design supports for people based on what we observed they needed. Experience over the last 30 years has taught us that better support looks like co-creating and co-designing solutions with people because cognitive decline doesn’t erase a person’s ability to contribute meaningful input.

Recognizing the imbalance of power that exists around creating support, resources, and places to live is essential to reimagining an approach that is centered around empowering individuals that are directly experiencing the effects of cognitive change. It is about more than improving support and services, it’s about establishing a dementia positive community together.

The LiveWell campus is transforming to include infrastructure to enable a dementia positive community to grow and flourish. The innovative concepts for LiveWell’s new dementia positive campus were conceived more than 10 years ago by a group of people living with dementia, residents, their families and friends, staff, and other key stakeholders invited to the table by LiveWell’s leadership. The group gathered over several sessions to co-design a campus that could redefine life with dementia.

In April of 2022 LiveWell broke ground on the ambitious expansion and renovation project that would bring their vision to life.

During thoughtful dialog with LiveWell leadership, the group made it clear that the ideal campus would be a place of acceptance and inclusion that would normalize life with cognitive change and create opportunities for everyone to contribute their personalities, strengths, abilities, and voices to shift the way people across the country view and treat dementia. The community they imagined would include people who live on — and off campus, who share a common purpose of responding to dementia from a disability rights perspective.

As construction and renovations reach completion, the LiveWell campus will offer even better opportunities for individuals and families to make care choices that are driven by personal values, identities, and a sense of belonging rather than being assigned a care plan that is dictated by an institution’s “memory care” routine. This community will support cognitive health and redefine life with dementia by helping people to adapt to cognitive change on their own terms. Living well with dementia is not only possible, it will become the standard.

Our mission is to be the epicenter of a dementia positive movement. Through the innovative campus, practices, and supports, the wellbeing and resiliency of people living with dementia, and anyone who values cognitive health will be at the core of everything we do. Through research, education, professional consulting, and advocacy we will spread the impact of what we learn, practice, and model on campus to communities around Connecticut, the US, and worldwide.