Call her Mary.
Once a high-level academic, she was a congenial, active woman who loved dining out with her husband and friends, but by the time she was 80, her memory already had started to fade. A few years later, dementia took over completely, and ruled any notion of going out, much less to eat.
That may change, thanks to the Florida Department of Elder Affairs’ Dementia Care & Cure Initiative (DCCI), representatives of which, among other things, teach restaurant owners and workers how to accommodate people with dementia and offer “dementia-friendly dining.”
The concept, gaining steam nationwide and in the Sunshine State through organizations including Central Florida Dementia-Friendly Dining, has it first representative in Brevard County at Tuscany Grill in Viera.
There, owner, Gina Pierce, already an advocate for the elderly, embraced the idea from the start.
Representatives of One Senior Place and Health First Aging Services gave Tuscany employees a seminar June 27 on how to welcome dementia patients. As a result, it has been designated a “Dementia Friendly Dining location.”
The process to experience such dining is simple: Caregivers or loved ones call Tuscany Grill for a reservation in a dementia-friendly setting and their party is seated in a quiet section of the restaurant, where a trained server will take care of them.
“We deal with a lot of elderly people, and plenty of times they will come dine with either their significant others or sometimes, caretakers,” Pierce said.
“It was really helpful to learn some of the cues, so that we could differentiate from someone possibly having dementia rather than just being difficult. We were given very useful tools to implement and have actually used them on several occasions already.”
Families consider options for loved ones
In Brevard County, an estimated 17,600 people 65 and older are living with Alzheimer’s. That number doesn’t include other dementias, such as vascular, Lewy body and frontotemporal. And the numbers are growing: According to the Alzheimer’s Association, an estimated 720,000 Florida seniors will have Alzheimer’s dementia by 2025 — a 24% increase from 2020 to 2025.
Some diners with one form of dementia or another aren’t difficult, but their families appreciate the effort of dining and shopping establishments to make the experience easier.
Angela Blackford Ritchey of West Melbourne called her father, Garland Blackford, “no problem at all.”
“I know what he liked to eat before he forgot, so I will make a suggestion and he says, ‘Sure,'” she said.
“I have heard some people are argumentative, but I don’t have that problem. I also mention that he has the dementia in case they think I am babying him.”
Merritt Island resident Sarah Bennett Huston, speaking of her own father, echoed Ritchey’s thoughts on dining out with a dementia patient.
“We are lucky that he is pleasant and happy by nature,” Huston said.
“We usually give him only a few choices, help him make his selection, then remind him what he picked. I definitely would be interested in hearing more about the program (at Tuscany Grill).”
Bringing the program to Brevard
The idea for establishing the dining option in Brevard was that of Lisa Conway, a registered nurse who is vice president of care services for One Senior Place.
“I actually was traveling in Sanford, where I saw a German restaurant (Hollerbach’s) doing it, and I thought, ‘We have the DCCI Task Force in Brevard County and I’m on that,” Conway said.
“And Gina and I have worked together in the past to make sure patrons (with dementia) were comfortable. We talk about ways to make them comfortable.”
The result was that training session by Pierce, Conway and Rebecca Osgood of the Health First Memory Disorder Clinic.
Their message for those and other restaurant people is, in a word, tranquility.
According to Pierce and Conway, they ask establishments to provide:
Conway said the DCCI Task Force is “going to try to bring more restaurants to the program, to educate people that you can bring a family member (with dementia) out for the evening. Our job is to tell caregivers that there is a place you can go out to.”
Pierce agreed.
“I think that if people know that we have this training, they might be a little more at ease, knowing we will respond correctly,” she said.
It should be no surprise that Tuscany Grill has undertaken dementia-friendly dining in light of the nature of some of its customers.
“We do have people who might suffer from dementia or other diminished capacities all the time; we have people who come on buses from some of the assisted living facilities,” Pierce said.
“You know how I feel about older people and how my goal is to make everyone have a great experience. So, if we can learn something to help us facilitate that, I feel like it is a really worthwhile cause.”
Lyn Dowling is a freelance food and lifestyles writer based in Melbourne.
More on dementia-related programs
Florida’s Dementia Care & Cure Initiative programs: https://elderaffairs.org/programs-services/bureau-of-elder-rights/dementia-care-cure-initiative.
DCCI of Brevard: https://brevardalz.org/dementia-care-cure-initiative-dcci-of-brevard.
Health First Memory Disorder Clinic: https://hf.org/memory-disorder-clinic
One Senior Place: https://oneseniorplace.com
Tuscany Grill is at 6630 Colonnade Ave., Viera; 321-757-7220 or visit tuscanygrill.net.
This article originally appeared on Florida Today: Dementia-friendly dining: This Brevard eatery staff trained to offer it. How does it work?
Reporting by Lyn Dowling / Florida Today
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
