Cold Spring couple shares its nationally recognized program for life enrichment for dementia patients with London audience

BY STAFF WRITER —
A Minnesota couple is becoming nationally recognized for their work in developing programs to help those with Alzheimer’s and dementia. In fact, make that internationally recognized.

Erin Bonitto, founder of Gemini Consulting, has been selected to speak at the eighth international conference of the International Association of Homes and Services for the Aging in London in July.

From their home in Cold Spring, Erin and her husband Chris travel the country speaking to groups and facilities and training staff at memory care facilities on how to use their programs.

The Bonittos’ Life Enrichment System is composed of three programs: the Alzheimer’s Dementia Lounge, therapeutic small groups, and soft sensory interventions. Each is designed to help caregivers connect with residents by triggering buried emotions and memories.

For example, the Alzheimer’s Lounge has a variety of “activity stations” that features props and supplies, such as flowers to be arranged, beads and jewelry to be strung, or cloths and towels to be folded — all designed to stir memories and responses.

“Halfway through the illness, you can still experience pleasure and you can take delight in learning something new,” Erin Bonitto told the St. Cloud Times. “You won’t remember what you learned, but the sense of pride at your accomplishment, the emotion, stays with you.”

For residents with moderate to severe dementia, the therapeutic small groups segment is designed to help them access memories. Caregivers might look at personal mementoes, such as wedding photos, with a resident and use all of a resident’s senses to communicate with them, such as feel or smell to trigger memories.

The third program, soft sensory care, uses aroma therapy, soothing music and gentle touch to increase alertness and decrease agitation in residents with advanced dementia.

Their Life Enrichment System has been funded and studied by the New York State Department of Health, which began working with Bonitto in 2006 to implement each module of her program for persons with dementia in four nursing homes. Her model caught the health department’s attention when it recognized one of the nursing homes that implemented her Alzheimer’s Lounge module with a 2005 Patient Safety Award, when the program was linked to a 50% fall reduction rate.

Chris and Erin meet when he was the administrator of a nursing home in Heron Lake and she was hired as the activities director. It was there that she created the Life Enrichment System. Chris encouraged her to develop a seminar to train others in her ideas and they formed Gemini Consulting in 1998. She has spoken at about 350 conferences or facilities over the past 10 years.

(Posted: June 15, 2009)