29
No Place Like Home: Christopher Community
and St. Camillus’ New Harborbrook
Apartments Help Seniors Age in Place with
Supportive Services By Jeff Diamond
For
many adults, the well-known expression
“there’s no place like home” takes on a
particularly special significance as they enter their
senior years. Aging in place and remaining active in
the community has become a common goal and one
that has reshaped the ways that providers, advocates
and policymakers think and talk about aging services.
When a senior’s home no longer accommodates his or
her physical needs, however, this goal can become very
difficult to achieve.
This dilemma was on the minds of the leadership
of Christopher Community, Inc. and The Centers at
St. Camillus in 2013, when the organizations began
discussing ways to expand their services into the
Syracuse community. Staff recognized that many older
adults who were not physically ill or did not have
long term diagnoses often ended up in skilled nursing
facilities (SNFs) because they lacked the supports and
services to live independently. With the discovery that
St. Camillus owned most of the large parcel of open
land directly adjacent to its campus, the conversation
turned to designing and building permanent
supportive housing that could accommodate those
changing needs.
The result of this dialogue between Christopher
Community and St. Camillus is the new Harborbrook
Apartments, a two-story building offering 60
one-bedroom independent living units and supportive
services for a subset of residents that connect them
to governmental and community resources, increase
their self-management of personal and instrumental
activities of daily living and provide assistance for
personal care when formal services are not scheduled.
Twenty of the 60 units are wheelchair accessible,
and the other 40 are fully adaptable (equipped
with cabinets that can be reconfigured if a resident
suddenly requires a wheelchair and needs the ability
to roll under the kitchen sink, for example). There are
no bathtubs in the building; all 60 of the bathrooms
include roll-in showers, with grab bars in place.
Additional special design features such as lift systems
are incorporated into units reserved for individuals
with a severe physical disability or traumatic
brain injury to enable easy wheelchair transfers
in the absence of an aide. In addition to the units,
Harborbrook residents have access to a community
room and a wellness room with fitness equipment,
suitable for exercise
classes, fall prevention
workshops and other
wellness activities.
Adviser a publication of LeadingAge New York | Fall 2018