The LiveWell Difference
A community where you belong and have access to everything.
Why accept the limitations of “memory care” when you deserve so much more? Without a dementia positive approach, memory care settings can hold limited beliefs about people affected by dementia. Keeping people living with cognitive change separate from other people and other parts of their own campus can send an unintentional message about a person’s worth and sense of inclusion and belonging.
The LiveWell Difference
A community where you belong and have access to everything.
Why accept the limitations of “memory care” when you deserve so much more? Without a dementia positive approach, memory care settings can hold limited beliefs about people affected by dementia. Keeping people living with cognitive change separate from other people and other parts of their own campus can send an unintentional message about a person’s worth and sense of inclusion and belonging.
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.
Join the Movement
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!
Book a Personal Tour
Book a Personal Tour
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 with dementia.
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.
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.
Nothing about you, without you
For over 30 years, LiveWell has innovated with people experiencing cognitive changeTogether 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.
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 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.
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 where empowering individuals directly experiencing the effects of cognitive change informs the path forward. It is about more than improving support and services, its 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 first phase of this transformation will include construction of two new residential spaces that use pioneering technology to promote independent living, as well as a campus center to serve as a hub for a variety of programming offered in spaces designed with intentionality for their distinct purpose so that when you walk into a room, you intuitively know why you’re there and know what to expect. The second phase of the transformation will include complete renovations of current skilled nursing and assisted living spaces that will promote more privacy and direct access outside.
When construction and renovations are complete, 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 well-being 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.