Life is always sweeter with good food and great friends—both can be found at St. Andrew’s Place.  Our fabulous kitchen cooks know how to take a little of this, a little of that and turn a basic meal into a gastronomical delight. With well over 800,000 meals and snacks prepared in the kitchen, our kitchen is starting to show its age.  It’s time for a little remodel. Nothing too extravagant. The floor needs to be replaced. The dish washing machine is on its last legs.  A new convection oven would be heaven!  Better storage and shelves will keep us organized.

To pay for the remodel, St. Andrew’s Place is fundraising.  If you would like to help us toward our goals, donations can be accepted on Paypal or mailed to St. Andrew’s Place. Also, funds raised during our annual Oktoberfest will be applied towards the remodel. Oktoberfest is an evening where everyone has a great time and is a wonderful opportunity for St. Andrew’s to raise money for the kitchen. (more information on page 06)

We hope to start the remodel in early November and be ready for the holiday season.

Bon Appétit!

The opportunity to enjoy life to the fullest is what living in an assisted living is all about.  Residents are able and encouraged to leave the building and enjoy the community they live in.  Take a walk in the neighborhood.  Jump on a bus and go to into town. Or, get in their car and head to the pool.  Anytime – day or night – residents have the right to leave the building.  Sometimes this can be a scary thought when a resident or your loved one has memory loss and may not remember how to get home.

We are fortunate that the Clallam County Sheriff Department participates in the Project Lifesaver Program.  Per the sheriff’s website, Project Lifesaver is “designed to track and rescue individuals with cognitive conditions who tend to wander, the service answers a critical need for protecting people at risk for wandering, including those with Alzheimer’s, Autism, Down Syndrome and Dementia.”

Specifically, Project Lifesaver provides a tracking monitor to be worn on the person (on the ankle or wrist) that has an individual tracking signal. In the event of a person wearing a tracker goes missing, the agency is notified and a trained team responds. A search that used to take hours or even days has been reduced significantly. Many of the missing persons are found inside 30 minutes – usually within a few miles from home.

At St. Andrew’s Place we are very thankful for this service!  Several former and current residents have been enrolled in the Project Lifesaver.  This program allows people to continue living in assisted living or their homes who otherwise would have to be placed in a secured memory community.  To verify tracking monitors are working correctly, once a month representatives of the Port Angeles Sherriff’s station visits the participant to check the equipment and change batteries.

Having memory issues does not mean the end of the freedom to take a stroll.  Using Project Lifesaver provides peace of mind to the residents, families, and staff of St. Andrew’s Place that if something were to happen, the resident can be found quickly.

For more information on Clallam County’s Project Lifesaver, please visit their website:

http://www.clallam.net/sheriff/projectlifesaver.html

Have you been following the discussions and debate on raising the minimum wage? Just for the record, we are not opposed to a change in minimum wages. But we need to be “real” about the impact of this decision. Raising the minimum wage tends to cause all wages to go up not just the minimum wage positions. Payroll taxes increase as the wage rate increases. We believe the cost for some services and products we purchase, will go up. Like a lot of companies right now, we are calculating the potential impact. We are concerned.
Our employees are worth more and should be paid higher. Our primary funding source is Medicaid. Medicaid DOES NOT cover the actual costs of providing a home, meals and health services now for those residents on the program. Our options at St. Andrew’s Place is to either stop accepting Medicaid residents, fundraise more, and/or ask for help. St. Andrew’s Place will continue to accept Medicaid. St. Andrew’s Place will continue to fundraising. However, we need your help. Please contact our state elected officials and ask them to help increase the Medicaid rates.

Please send the following letter:

Dear xxx,

St. Andrew’s Place Assisted Living located in Port Angeles, Washington accepts a high level of residents participating in Medicaid. Over the past three years, their actual daily expense per resident has been $100 or better. The typical rate received for their Medicaid residents usually run between $68 and $87 per day, this causes a financial challenge. We want St. Andrew’s Place to continue accepting new Medicaid residents. We want our families to stay in Port Angeles. St Andrew’s Place needs a raise in the Medicaid rates. They have to pay their bills like everyone else. And please note, as a non-profit, they do not pay stockholders or owners – funds are put back into St. Andrew’s Place – for the residents, employees and building.
Please advocating for an increase in the Medicaid rates during the next Legislative session.
Thank-you for your time.

Respectfully,

Our Elected Officials:
Senator:
Jim Hargrove Jim.Hargrove@leg.wa.gov
Representatives:
Kevin Van De Wege Kevin.VanDeWege@leg.wa.gov
Steve Tharinger Steve.Tharinger@leg.wa.gov

Photo: State Senate panel in Olympia. http://nwpr.org/