In this Expert Opinion, Senior Living Business editor Jane Zarem talks to Jackie Harris, CEO of Trinity Senior Living Communities about their new model of senior living, called “Sanctuary.”

You can listen to the interview here by clicking here or read the transcript below.

Jane Zarem
I’m speaking with Jackie Harris, President and CEO of Trinity Senior Living Communities, which is incorporating a new “Sanctuary” concept for senior living into the 33 communities it operates in Michigan, Maryland and Indiana.

Jackie, how would you describe your new Trinity Senior Living Community Sanctuary model and your overall culture change strategy?

Jackie Harris
Certainly, I would describe it as a person-centered care model, but one with significant culture change work as its foundation.

Jane Zarem
Okay.  And can you just describe the model in a little more detail?

Jackie Harris
Sure.  Actually, we have spent about four years implementing the Eden Alternative and the culture change that goes into that in terms of training and educating. We’ve had about 2,000 of our employees go through Eden training.  So we really looked at that as the foundation for person-centered care model based on self-determination and empowerment of caregivers and the elders that they serve.

Jane Zarem
And then how does this initiative transcend or expand the alternative philosophy?

Jackie Harris
Well, we call Eden our on-ramp.  And it really helps build a very solid foundation.  Sanctuary is our care philosophy rooted in our own organization’s mission, values and the heritage of our founders.  So really, Sanctuary is our story.  We felt that Eden was a very good foundation and we agree with the principles. And the principles of Eden still is the foundation for our work, our Sanctuary work.  But Eden was the Thomas’s story and we felt like our organization had such a rich mission and heritage that we needed to find something that could connect with our caregivers and our associates that they could really get behind.  And so Sanctuary really represents a lot of work, over a year’s work of conversations with people about what’s the most important thing to you, both to live in our communities, to be a family member in our communities or to be an associate in our communities.  And a safe place for well-being kept coming up, maybe not in those exact words, but as we talked to people that did our work, our culture change work, that really is what continued to surface.  And so for us as a faith-based, Catholic organization, Sanctuary just was the perfect word to represent what people were telling us about our culture.

Jane Zarem
I see.  And now how are you implementing this new Sanctuary model?

Jackie Harris
Well, we’ve completely retooled our operating system to support Sanctuary, both in terms of process and physical plant.  Our culture work is really the foundation, so that continues.  We’ve changed the Eden Alternative training to Sanctuary training and incorporated all that that means for us as an organization.  So it’s how we hire people and how we orientate them and the career mapping that we do, that development and training, that whole component of the culture in which our organization is rooted and our associates work in.

And then we look at the process change that supports the care model shift.  So, for instance, our communities are doing breakfast upon natural rising, meds upon rising, permanent assignments…both things that, even without a physical plant, changed the way people make decisions and the way they live their lives every day.

So what we’re really trying to do with Sanctuary in a nutshell, like so many other people out there, is we’re trying to take a very broken system and create something a lot more meaningful.

Jane Zarem
Right.  And what are your plans for, first of all, implementing it and then replicating it in all of your communities.

Jackie Harris
Well, we are implementing it.  All of that work I just talked about is that implementation of the culture.  The physical plant changes, we did decide not to build Green Houses.  We want to make sure that we impact as many seniors and residents as we can, so we’re actually retrofitting all of our current communities into what you would know as the Neighborhood model.  So we are creating sanctuaries in our existing physical plants.  We have a pilot, we have another community in Indiana that is currently undergoing the physical plan modifications for that.  And the rest of our communities are scheduled for those changes as we go forward.

Jane Zarem
Do you have a timeframe?

Jackie Harris
This is multi-year project. The culture piece and the care process change happens much quicker than the actual physical plant and we really feel like the culture component is the most important piece of it.  They physical plant just supports that culture.

Jane Zarem
I see.  Okay, well, thank you very much, Jackie.

Jackie Harris
Thank you.