The Family's Role in Senior Living: A Powerful Collaboration with James Lee, CEO & Co-Founder of Bella Groves
Does our role as a caregiver or a care partner end when our loved one moves into a senior living community? How can senior living communities support and educate families during this time?
My guest today is James Lee. He is the CEO and Co-Founder of Bella Groves, an education based dementia support organization. For a long time, I have valued James' leadership and voice in the aging services space. He has a gift of bringing about thought-provoking conversations and kindly challenges us to look at how and why we make decisions in care. James has dedicated his career to helping families and communities grow closer together in collaboration.
We are coming together in conversation to encourage a change in mindset around how senior living communities can support families through the aging experience. Both James and I are incredibly passionate about bringing families into the conversation as we see their role as collaborators, not customers. We want to empower families to have agency over their decisions and feel empowered with education. They are a powerful advocate for their loved ones.
As we bear witness to the roles we've all played previously, we are stepping into a new way of care- where no one is displaced as the primary caregiver. When we show up with compassion for families and their changing roles, we see better outcomes and supported families. This framework is what it is all about. Thank you, James, for your incredible leadership and for encouraging us all to change and challenge the status quo.
James shares about:
Bringing families and communities together through the aging experience
Re-framing the role of the family in senior living
Looking at families as collaborators, not customers
How families continue their caregiving journey into senior living
What is the Social Contract of Dementia Care
How we can bring families, healthcare teams, and the local community together
How dementia is different from other diagnoses
The ways in which senior living can support and educate families
How we can empower families to have agency
A challenge for senior living to change the status quo
Having compassion for families and the changing roles we experience
About James Lee & Bella Groves
James Lee has dedicated his career to helping families and communities to grow closer together through the aging and caregiving chapters of people's lives. He is deeply motivated and affected by his personal caregiving journey for members of his own family through circumstances ranging from dementia to cancer and ultimately through the death and grieving processes. He is equally a passionate advocate and leader in the senior living industry who seeks to create teams and workplaces that really matter. He does this by genuinely addressing the needs of caregivers and other professionals whose own passions are often dimmed by the grueling demands of the "big business" of senior living.
James has various professional outlets for living his mission. He is the CEO and co-Founder of Bella Groves (www.bellagroves.com), an education based dementia support organization with its pilot location in San Antonio, Texas. He coaches and consults leaders of small businesses in senior living through his firm, Bear Wise Consulting. James also produces and hosts a podcast called "Level Up Leadership Podcast" for those he refers to as "Head + Heart leaders" in mission driven professions. He is also a sought-after speaker and trainer and is often found on stage or on the screen in front of industry peers at professional conferences and private company events. James serves as a board member to Hands 4 Life, a not-for-profit organization developing intergenerational living spaces in developing countries for orphaned children and seniors. James holds an M.B.A. from the University of Texas, McCombs School of Business, and he lives with his family in San Antonio, Texas.
To learn more, visit Bella Groves.
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