Addington Place: resident-centric senior living

Mt. Pleasant’s Addington Place has long been a resident-centric senior living community dedicated to providing the best level of hospitality, while also supplying residents with assisted living, memory care and respite care.

Cody Flietner, who is the marketing director at Addington Place explained the multitude of amenities they offer.

“We can do anything from medication management, assistance with dressing, bathing, hygiene, ambulation and we can go beyond that,” Flietner said. “We can care for wounds. We don’t do physical or occupational therapy on site, but third party places are allowed to come in and assist the residents.”

A number of residents are currently going through therapy, with the ultimate goal of returning home.

Addington Place can assist its residence in a number of ways, but there are things they cannot do too.

“We can do as minimal as needed or as much as we can,” Flietner said. “Really the only things we can’t do is a two-person assist or more. That would be the level of a nursing home. The other one would be if they showed combative or aggressive actions, like hitting, biting or spitting. Those types of behaviors we wouldn’t allow to stay with us anymore. Anything else under the umbrella of care we can do.”

The residences that reside at Addington Place, chose to live there for an abundance of reasons Flietner says.

“Socialization is huge in the senior community,” he said. “A lot of the time, we get widows that come through our doors that maybe lost a husband or wife. Or maybe they were just single their whole life and they need that socialization and interaction.”

Residence might also be people that are not eating right or not taking there medication or those that are seeing a cognitive decline in health.

Flietner says that they see big improvements with those residents that have not been taking medicine over the 30 days after they’ve been on a schedule. A lot of the time it’s hard on the family to see there loved struggling.

“After we’ve got them into a routine, we do see within the first 30 days that people who were not eating or taking their medicine right, it’s like a complete 180,” Flietner said. “We see a lot of the time, the families just breakdown. There’s times when they’re actually getting sick because there focusing 100% of their time on their loved one at home and they just can’t do it. So we kind of take that off of their shoulders.”

One of the perks that the residence get to partake in at Addington Place is the slew of events that are held there.

Many of the ideas for events are created by the residents Flietner said. With Addington Place’s new management company JayBird, they are able to get more in tune with the residents to learn their likes and dislikes.

“We cater and nurture our events and activities around them, so they get full enjoyment out of those,” Flietner said.

One of the biggest programs is the Life Long Learning Series, in which professionals are brought in to teach the residence about a certain skill or allow them to learn about a different culture. These are just a few examples of what the program offers.

As of right now, Addington Place’s residence are around 80% women. Flietner says they are now focusing on adding additional programs and events for the men, like creating a poker night for example.

Flietner wanted to reiterate that they are not a nursing home, although some people might think so.

“I always stress this, we are not a nursing home,” he said. “We are that step in between their independent living and nursing home. We would like them to stay in assisted living as long as we can. We like to say that this is the next chapter in their life. It doesn’t mean it’s their last chapter, it’s just the next. We want to fulfill it with as much laughter, memories and fun as we can.”

Flietner says his favorite thing about the job is making a residents day.

“The most rewarding thing coming out of the job is, making a residents day,” he said. “’Whether it’s putting a smile on their face or getting them to laugh. I push them a little bit out of their comfort zone when we do a video or picture. I might have a really crappy day in the office part of it, but as soon as I step out and sit with a group of the residents I’m dying laughing. We love to have fun and seeing us giving them a sense of purpose really fulfills my heart.”