In late 2022, the Administration of Community Living (ACL) awarded Alzheimer Orange County (AlzOC) a grant to promote the development and expansion of dementia-capable home and community-based services intended to improve the quality of life of people living with Alzheimer’s disease or related dementias and their caregivers. Using this funding, AlzOC began introducing new programming to serve Leisure World Seal Beach (LWSB), a local and large community of older adults.
One new initiative made possible by this grant was the development of the Memory Support Team. This new program—based on the Care Ecosystem model developed by the University of California, San Francisco—brings together a team of Care Team Navigators (CTNs), licensed social workers, gerontologists, and pharmacists to provide support and care management for residents of LWSB to provide education, links to community-based services, behavioral management, medication reconciliation, advance care planning support among other service offerings. The goal? To improve the health and wellbeing of persons living with dementia and their care partners, as well as to decrease unnecessary medical costs.
Working together with the community’s management team and other local partners, AlzOC is also using the ACL grant to develop an adult day program and amplify support for underserved populations like Korean-Americans residing in LWSB. Collectively these programs aim to help LWSB become a more dementia-friendly community at the end of the three-year initiative. AlzOC can then assess how to effectively expand similar services to other areas of Orange County in need.
