Upcoming Events

NHHCA and VHCA In-Person Educational Opportunity:

A Day of Team building for Activities Professionals, appropriate for leaders and assistants/aides.

Behavioral Health: The Changing Role of Therapeutic Activity

Traditional activity programming often fails to meet the behavioral health needs of the growing numbers of residents with dementia, mental disorders, substance use, and intellectual/developmental disabilities. Therapeutic activity should be person-centered, productive, and designed to serve as a realistic foundation for recovery and improvement. This session offers guidance in developing new pathways to improved coordination and teamwork in the provision of therapeutic activity for an increasingly diverse population.

At the conclusion of the presentation teams will be able to:

1. Explain the regulatory standards for quality of life, trauma-informed care, and behavioral health relative to therapeutic activity;
2. Recognize the positive impact of individualized, productive, diversionary activity on mood and behavior; and
3. Develop systems and services to ensure that residents’ behavioral health needs are appropriately and effectively addressed through person-centered, non-pharmacologic interventions.

Content:

1. Review of the regulatory standards for quality of life, trauma-informed care, and behavioral health relative to therapeutic activity;
2. Discussion and case studies on the positive impact of individualized, productive, diversionary activity on mood and behavior;
3. Guidance in developing systems and services to ensure that residents’ behavioral health needs are appropriately and effectively addressed through person-centered, non-pharmacologic interventions.

PRESENTER:  Barbara Speedling, Innovations for Quality Living

An inspirational and motivational speaker, Barbara is an author, educator and management consultant at the forefront of person-centered care.

An innovator with more than 30 years of practical experience within the adult care community, she is the expert providers turn to when they want to ensure that the services they provide meet not only the physical needs of their residents, but their emotional and psychosocial needs as well.

Working from a core belief in the dignity and individuality of all people, Barbara has helped countless adult care communities implement her unique training and education programs that:

• Improve the quality of care for those living with Alzheimer’s disease
• Bring better quality of life to such residents, as well as to those who live with disease-related dementia, a mental illness, or a brain injury
• Encourage staffers to use newly developed cultural empathy to form better relationships with those in their care
• Offer new strategies for promoting harmony among increasingly diverse, younger and assertive populations
• Open new pathways to maintaining regulatory compliance 
• Support leadership and organizational development

In addition to her degree in healthcare administration, Barbara is an accomplished musician and artist.  She uses those talents to develop new and creative ways of reaching out to those who are cognitively diminished.  She was also certified in 2015 by Dr. Susan Wehry as a Master Trainer for the OASIS education program for improved care of residents with dementia.

The author of two books devoted to common sense advice for meeting the holistic needs of an increasingly diverse and challenging community, both Why is Grandma Screaming and Toward Better Behavior:  Yours Mine & Everyone Else’s are now widely distributed to staff members at community, residential and long-term care facilities across the country and in Canada.

Blessed with boundless energy and tireless enthusiasm, Barbara also volunteers in her free time to offer caregiver education and support to families who need it most.  Through her affiliations with local artists and musicians in her native New York City, she also arranges therapeutic music, dance and wellness programming that improves the quality of life for local seniors.

The day includes a light breakfast, lunch, and 6.0 CEUs