News & Events Archives - Scandinavian Living Center

Local News Scandinavian Living Center in Newton brings seniors and community together

SLCHQ — Fri, 03 Nov 2023 19:06:06 +0000

NEWTON – The Scandinavian Living Center and Cultural Center in Newton is a non-profit assisted living facility where they do everything different from the norm.

“What sets us apart is that we have a model of community centered living, which invites the public to interact with the residents in a more natural way,” Kerry Lavin, the director of the cultural center, told WBZ-TV.

“I think the Scandinavian sensibility for interior design really permeates,” said resident Hugh Ault.

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Fund the Future Campaign

SLCHQ — Mon, 26 Oct 2020 19:59:04 +0000

We are at a unique moment in the history of the Scandinavian Charitable Society of Greater Boston.
Our vision for how to best care for aging members of our society is garnering national and international attention. Our philosophy of community-centered living is setting us apart and helping to positively influence the approach to eldercare in America. It has improved the lives of elders and enriched the broader community through social encounters and open doors.

Yet, we know we can be doing more to remain leaders in our field and be well-positioned to build upon our accomplishments.

A successful campaign will allow us to:

Expand subsidies for residents who can no longer afford our full cost.
Remain an affordable and high-quality assisted living center.
Make necessary capital improvements, such as increasing accessibility of the porch and renovating apartments, without passing the costs on to residents.
Develop and expand our programs.
Grow our endowment to safeguard the future of the organization.

Let us join together to lay a solid foundation for the future.

Donate

Thank you for your support.

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Isolating The Problem

SLCHQ — Mon, 26 Oct 2020 19:28:00 +0000

Imagine having a traditional, stand-alone assisted living community that gets over 2,000 visitors each month—not including families and friends of residents.

Imagine having over 40 local clubs using your space as a headquarters, gathering place and creating programs and events for your residents but bringing in the greater community as well.

Imagine neighbors and friends choosing your assisted living community to meet for coffee instead of the local Starbucks or bringing their kids because “it’s cool.”

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Scandinavian Living Center Receives Award

SLCHQ — Mon, 26 Oct 2020 19:10:34 +0000

The Scandinavian Living Center, an assisted living com-munity in Newton, received the 2018 Community Commitment Award Special Recognition from the Pioneer Network at the network’s annual confer-ence.

A Word From: Penny Cook, President & CEO of the Pioneer Network

“We honored Scandinavian Living Center with a Special Recognition at our 2018 Conference because they live and breathe the essence of Community Commitment Award with their philosophy of community-centered living. They are a great example for us all as we are changing the culture of care and support.”

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Creating Masterpieces Through Community-Centered Living

SLCHQ — Mon, 26 Oct 2020 19:07:41 +0000

The philosophy of community-centered living brings together important principles of social interaction that not only combat isolation for all ages but can also lead to a paradigm shift in how we care for and interact with each other. This shift can then lead to the elimination of institutional thinking and design.

When we separate our elders, or any age group, we prevent the human connections that need to take place in all our personal journeys. These personal journeys do not end when we move into any type of residential community, from nursing homes to independent housing. Isolation and institutional thinking begin at the front door of any place in which the focus shifts from the community to only those who live inside those doors.

The senior housing industry has an obligation to promote community-centered living because social isolation is unhealthy. Successful community-centered living involves establishing a residential setting that is welcoming to all ages, that encourages autonomy for all ages and that expands the opportunities for the involvement of all ages.

What Does Community-Centered Living Look Like?

To implement community-centered living, it is important to create an environment that is welcoming to all ages. It starts with the elimination of institutional design, a medical model that is structured and hospital-like, leading to deficits in social experiences. It calls for a shift toward generous common space in which the entire community can gather. By bringing all ages together in any residential setting, we can break down social isolation, creating a healthier housing model for all.

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Taking Care of Our Elders

SLCHQ — Mon, 26 Oct 2020 18:55:03 +0000

They are our most venerable citizens. They have spent their lives raising children, building careers, and answering the call of their community and country. As they age, however, our seniors need care, attention, and often a new place to live. The business of senior housing is challenging, marked by inadequate reimbursements, stifling regulations, and complicated medical conditions, but these alumni strive to provide a warm, safe place to call home.

By John Crawford

Joe Carella, MBA’89, was more or less a typical teenager in the 1970s. A football player, he was strong, cocky, and fearless, and his day-to-day concerns ran the usual gamut of sports, girls, and school.

Then at the age of 17, a freak accident forced him to change his perspective, to think beyond his narrow teenage preoccupations. Tearing his ACL while working out, Carella went to the hospital but was told that the pediatric ward was “closed.” Instead, the hospital admitted him into an unfamiliar place: the geriatric ward.

Not even knowing what the word “geriatric” meant at the time, Carella was crowded into a room with two older men. One was lost in the advanced stages of dementia, his only human interaction coming when a nurse brought him food. Carella’s other roommate, facing the loss of his legs due to gangrene, was quiet and despondent. From his bed, Carella could see other seniors slumped in wheelchairs along the hallway.

The sad, impersonal geriatric ward troubled Carella. He felt helpless and anxious. He worried about his roommates. After four days, he successfully lobbied the head of nursing to move him to pediatrics, though his experience in the ward never left him. It would change the course of his life, inspiring him to work with seniors as a career. “There’s a phobia in me that I will return there,” says Carella, who, even now, has woken from sleep thinking he was in the ward. “That drives me, that feeling I could go back, that someone I love could go there.” Today, Carella is executive director of the Scandinavian Charitable Society of Greater Boston, which operates the Scandinavian Living Center, a nonprofit assisted-living residence in Newton, Massachusetts.

Carella is one of a number of Babson alumni working in the rewarding yet challenging world of senior housing, making sure that our most esteemed and respected citizens, our parents and grandparents, our elders, have a safe and welcoming place to live.

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Meet Joe Carella of Scandinavian Living Center & Creating Unlimited Options for Aging: The Path Forward

SLCHQ — Mon, 26 Oct 2020 18:51:41 +0000

Today we’d like to introduce you to Joe Carella.

Joe, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
My passion is finding a better way for all of us on our journeys through life, and that’s a passion that was set out from childhood, where I lived in a very close-knit neighborhood that set the tone for the value of human connections across generations.

As a teenager, I was mistakenly placed in a geriatric hospital ward for four days and four nights, and the emotional and physical impact it had on me was long-lasting. As I grew into an adult, I chose a career path that searched for a better way to care for our elders. I found my way to Scandinavia, where I discovered commonsense principles surrounding the idea of community-centered living.

This is an idea that’s common abroad but unusual here in the US, where we tend to isolate our elders. So, when I returned I began working to bring the philosophy here, knowing that it could create better outcomes across generations. In 2001, I became the director of the Scandinavian Living Center, an assisted living community in Newton, and implemented the community-centered living philosophy there. Over the past 15+ years, we’ve been able to prove it as a great success.

Today, my mission is to bring the community-centered living philosophy to people across the country; the SLC remains one-of-a-kind in the US, and I think that’s a huge missed opportunity.

As such, I’m bringing the lessons of the SLC to life in my book, Creating Unlimited Options for Aging: The Path Forward. Here, I detail the personal experiences that led me to community-centered living, the lessons learned in 15+ years of putting it into practice at the SLC, and how we as a country can move forward in this vein to create more connected communities and better options for our aging population.

Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
When I took the helm at the SLC, I was very fortunate to be surrounded by Scandinavian Board members who understood the community centered living philosophy along with the other principles that made up the development of the Scandinavian Living Center. Implementing the philosophy meant building out an entirely new Scandinavian Living Center.

Initially, the primary obstacles I faced were from American colleagues who felt that we could not reproduce what the Scandinavian countries were doing. It was the architects with American designs for senior care who questioned the idea of a 50% common space ratio to living space. Once the Center was built, it was difficult for staff to understand the idea that the Center was more than a place to house people, but a place to gather the entire community.

Having community programs had more to do with gathering community members than to market the facility. After all these years, it is still better for the community to discover the assisted living place when they are here for something else such as an event at the Cultural Center, physical therapy at a local practitioner, or the other 25-30 organizations that utilize the place as a place to gather. In short, the only obstacle is a lack of education toward the common-sense philosophy of community centered living. It is a game changer once it is embraced.

Scandinavian Living Center & author of Creating Unlimited Options for Aging: The Path Forward – what should we know? What do you guys do best? What sets you apart from the competition?
The Scandinavian Charitable Society of Greater Boston is the parent company for both the Scandinavian Living Center, a 40-apartment traditional assisted living facility, and the Scandinavian Cultural Center.

In addition, we are the headquarters to over twenty-five nonprofit organizations and clubs, along with businesses such as Newton at Home, Minding Your Mind, and Tim Dreher Associates, an outpatient physical therapy company, the Scandinavian Library and a pop-up Saturday café. Together, not counting family and friends of the residents, we get over 2,000 visitors a month that come through the doors of the Center.

I believe we are known for our commitment to community-centered living and the impact it has on both the residents and the community of Newton and the Greater Boston area. What sets us about is that we believe that all housing facilities should be a place for gathering as opposed to a place to house people. We believe that the human connections that we experience in our own personal journeys in life should never stop when you move into a new housing arrangement.

What has been the proudest moment of your career so far?
I do not think I have achieved a “proudest moment in my career” moment. However, I will be proud when everyone embraces the simple concepts I share in Creating Unlimited Options for Aging, the Path Forward. If we can remove the institutional thinking and the institutional designs, I hope that the next generation will be able to benefit from better communities for aging.

Contact Info:

Address: 206 Waltham Street West Newton MA 02465
Website: www.slcenter.org/book
Phone: 617.467.3177
Email: joe@slcenter.org
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ScandinavianLivingCenter/
Other: www.scandicenter.org (the Scandinavian Cultural Center, which is housed w/the SLC)

[See image gallery at www.slcenter.org]

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Breaking Down Barriers in Assisted Living

SLCHQ — Mon, 26 Oct 2020 18:43:14 +0000

Posted on April 9, 2018 by Robyn Tellefsen

People typically perceive assisted living facilities as separate from the community at large, a place where seniors engage with their peers and no one else. But some assisted living communities provide tremendous opportunities to keep seniors connected with the world beyond the residence.

The Scandinavian Living Center (SLC) in Newton, MA, for example, houses an assisted living center as well as a cultural center, businesses, nonprofits, and even a pop-up café. As a result, more than 2,000 people come through the SLC’s doors each month, creating an opportunity for residents to remain organically involved with the local community.

Here, with the help of SLC executive director Joe Carella, we highlight the ways community-centered living can break down barriers between assisted living and the community as a whole.

The Community-Centered Living Model

In the community-centered living model, seniors are not set apart from the local community because of their age or their care needs. Instead, they are welcomed as integral, contributing members of their community.

“Both the residents and their neighbors and friends in the surrounding community are given the opportunity to not only maintain their hobbies and interests, but also to try new things through all the unexpected and changing human connections,” explains Carella. “It encourages everyone to look forward to new opportunities.”

Of course, just because the opportunities are available doesn’t mean residents will take advantage of them. That’s still up to each individual, who has the freedom to choose how much or how little he or she will get involved. But these opportunities for connection can lead to a greater likelihood of community participation.

“When you bring people together, the opportunity for meaningful and influential connections increases,” affirms Carella. “Community-centered living cannot prosper unless you create natural human connections through many opportunities to gather.”

Stories of Community-Centered Living

And at the Scandinavian Living Center, connections are formed on a regular basis.

Carella shares the story of a 102-year-old SLC resident who chose to volunteer for Newton at Home, one of the nonprofit organizations renting office space in the building. Her job? To contact a homebound 87-year-old man to make sure he was OK.

“In an unexpected and unplanned connection, the 102-year-old woman living in an assisted living facility was reaching out and assisting a neighbor in the city of Newton to stay safe,” says Carella.

In his book Creating Unlimited Options for Aging: The Path Forward, Carella also shares the story of a teenage boy who began seeing a physical therapist located in the SLC. At first the boy questioned whether an assisted living community was the best environment for his physical therapy, but his uncertainties were soon set aside. Within a week, he had started dropping by the café to spend time with residents.

“As I witnessed this new bond, I marveled at its sharp contrast to the negative experience I had as a teenager,” writes Carella. “My observation of this warm interaction between a young person and much older adults was another step in my increased understanding of the impact and importance of natural connections facilitated by the community-centered living principle.”

As these stories illustrate, assisted living residents are a vital part of their communities—and we would all lose something valuable without their input and their very presence.

“The advantages are for an entire community, not just the people living inside a facility,” affirms Carella. “The benefit becomes our ability to continue the journey in life with never-ending human connection and human influence.”

CHIME IN: How have you benefited from living in intergenerational community with others?

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Assisted Living that’s a Neighborhood, Not a Facility

SLCHQ — Mon, 26 Oct 2020 18:38:53 +0000

By Cindy Cantrell Globe Correspondent June 07, 2018

In addition to having an assisted-living community of 40 one-bedroom apartments, the nonprofit Scandinavian Living Center in West Newton welcomes approximately 2,000 community members monthly to a pop-up café, meetings, performances, film screenings, and other events at the adjacent Scandinavian Cultural Center.

Executive director Joe Carella, author of “Creating Unlimited Options for Aging: The Path Forward,” traces his passion for elder care to his teen years. After injuring his knee, he was initially hospitalized in a geriatric unit, where he resolved to identify a better alternative to institutional living. After receiving an MBA from Babson College, he traveled to Scandinavia to learn about its system of elder care, which is reflected throughout the center.

Q. What distinguishes Scandinavian Living Center from other assisted-living facilities?

A. Our center wasn’t built just to house people. It’s a neighborhood that has housing within it, all designed to gather people and keep them connected to one another.

Q. How is that accomplished?

A. Half of our square footage is common space that’s welcoming to everyone. We also give our residents autonomy, encouraging them to take responsibility for decisions and empowering them. If everyone incorporated Scandinavian principles the right way, it would be a game-changer for the entire [assisted-living] industry.

Q. What are those principles?

A. We embrace community-centered living with a light-filled design that brings people together, allowing for natural human connections to occur for all ages. We don’t just think about what we can do for elders, because it’s that kind of institutional thinking that contributes to their isolation. We focus on what we can do for the community, while providing a safe environment that ensures elders can remain active.

Q. In what ways?

A. We encourage residents to maintain their hobbies, interests, and lifestyle. We have 25 to 30 organizations that meet here, so our residents can join a group that maybe they wouldn’t otherwise participate in without transportation. Having the Scandinavian Cultural Center and all its events right here is another opportunity to try new things.

Q. What is your ultimate goal, for yourself or the organization?

A. I want to be a catalyst for others to embrace community living. It’s a gift that we should all be able to enjoy for the rest of our lives.

Scandinavian Living Center is at 206 Waltham St., West Newton. For more information, call 617-527-6566 or visit slcenter.org.

Cindy Cantrell may be reached at cindycantrell20@gmail.com.

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