Friendship Adult Day Care Center in Santa Barbara has been awarded a $251,149 from the Alzheimer’s Association Center for Dementia Respite Innovation (CDRI).
The grant is designed to enhance the quality and availability of dementia specific-respite care for people living with dementia and their caregivers in South Santa Barbara County.
Friendship Center is one of 21 recipients chosen to receive grant funding from nearly 200 applicants across the country.
Funds will be used to develop Friendship Center’s first community-based, person-centered activity ‘hubs’ for adults living with and impacted by dementia in South Santa Barbara County.
The hubs, serving as satellite locations to Friendship Center’s flagship site of 45 years, will provide cognitive, emotional, physical, and social engagement tailored to individual preferences of program attendees and local resources — from other nonprofit organizations to local business and restaurants — allowing older adults to thrive in their own communities, among their own neighbors.
“The innovative aspect of this initiative lies in its deep integration into the local community, fostering a sense of shared responsibility for and visibility of modern dementia care,” said Kathryn Westland, executive director of Friendship Center and principal investigator for the project.
“By situating these hubs within familiar community spaces, we aim to create a model that offers high-quality care while re-engaging individuals with their community at a time in their lives when seclusion and isolation are significantly more likely,” she said.
“The tagline for this initiative is ‘Celebrating Lives Well Lived in Communities Well Loved,’ a concept that really helped guide the ethos of our proposal,” she said. “The streets were paved, waves were surfed and schools were staffed in this area by the very same people who attend Friendship Center every day.
“We hope that by embedding tailored services within their local communities, these individuals can age-in-place with confidence, pride and camaraderie rather than be forced to seek care outside their familiar environment.”
Since opening in 1976, Friendship Center has been the sole provider of dementia focused-day programs and caregiver respite in South Santa Barbara County.
Friendship Center welcomes individuals living with various forms and stages of dementia or other cognitive impairments that limit their ability to independently access regular socialization, physical activity, nutrition or personal care.
As part of their mission to never turn someone away due to an inability to pay for services, Friendship Center offers membership fees on a sliding scale basis based on each unique situation.
In conjunction with the grant, Friendship Center will also receive online training and ongoing technical assistance from the CDRI to ensure respite services are dementia-capable and to support sustainability.
The CDRI will collect data and evaluate the impact of these innovative projects from all grant recipients to inform public policy.
“We congratulate Friendship Center on its grant and look forward to working with its team to help enhance respite care services for local dementia caregivers,” said Sam Fazio, senior director, psycho-social research and quality care, Alzheimer’s Association.
“We intend to gain insights from each respite program we fund, ultimately developing a catalog of programs, tools and resources that will be easily accessible to interested caregivers and care providers,” Fazio said.
The Alzheimer’s Association created CDRI earlier this year after receiving a $25 million grant from the Administration for Community Living, a division of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
Over the next five years, the CDRI will provide $25 million in grant funding to local respite providers and organizations to enhance the quality and availability of respite care nationwide.