Warm Hearth visit

Yesterday, as a group, we went to visit Warm Hearth which provides many services to adults 55 and older. We toured their Kroontje Health Care Center (names after a Dane who started this program many years ago) where they provide assisted living care and memory care (for those mostly with Dementia). Then we drove over to the Showalter Center which is mostly apartments for those who need a small level of assistance. Then we went to visit some townhomes for independent living and ended at Woods Edge, their active adult community (with extremely nice, yet pricey..... almost half a million.... houses). We basically learned how they handled care on multiple levels and got insight into how they function. Touring the facilities wasn't really that big of an eye-opener for me even though I think our professor was hoping it would be. I've been in nursing homes before and this was much nicer. Yet I also remember looking at different places for my grandmother to move into and those were exactly like the assisted living places they had here! They tried to emphasize how they had some new innovations in care, but I felt like I had seen many similarities before. Now granted, they did have some new smaller things that not many other places have, like memory care, semi-private room set-ups and high staffing requirements. It just didn't seem that different though. I'm wondering if we will see a much greater difference with Sweden care. I read some research for today's tour at our Adult Day Services and it basically compared and contrasted care in the U.S. and Sweden, yet I didn't see many big differences. It will be interesting to see if we see differences, rather than just possibly reading about them. What I did get from that research was that the Swedes usually accept anyone into care, rather than have specific entry requirements and therefore, you see a lot of diversity in participants in care settings.

On a random side note, I found out that there's basically a 100% chance that we will get reimbursed for something on our trip (even though we don't know what yet). Because there are 8 students going (rather than 5), I think we got a break in the group fees which saves money on other things like museum admission and some food. Our professor also got a small grant I believe and hopefully that will help cover some of the smaller costs while there.

It's looking fairly likely that we will be spending our first weekend in Copenhagen. We have found a flight for $50 one-way from Stockholm right after our plane lands (we're not sure if we can clear customs in time though) and then a $50 train ticket from Copenhagen to Jonkoping. We're still trying to decide if we just want to wait until we get there to book a flight since there might be other random and rare opportunities that could surface.