The Virginia Assisted Living Association (VALA) hosted its second annual Senior Living Summit last Wednesday in Fairfax, VA, bringing together assisted living administrators, regional directors, industry partners, and state licensing representatives–nearly doubling registration from the inaugural Northern Virginia event in 2024. The Summit focused on “Supporting Independence Together: A Team Approach to Senior Living,” and featured a collaborative session, “Championing Change: The Impact of Advocacy on Senior Living,” led by Dan Samson of Argentum, Kyler Hedrick of Cozen O’Connor Public Strategies and Judy Hackler of VALA on federal and state legislative and regulatory successes and opportunities that have been the direct result of advocacy efforts by Argentum, VALA, and their members. The session emphasized everyone is aging, resulting in the need to educate public policy makers that senior living needs to be a nonpartisan priority and is crucial to meeting the long-term care housing needs of the aging population.
The Summit also featured an inspirational opening session by David Posner of 3 Point Care Consulting, where participants learned how to seamlessly weave together real-world instances from the referee’s playbook with actionable wisdom for achieving leadership success. Kari Brizendine of Select Rehabilitation transitioned the conversations to resident safety in identifying those most at risk of elopement and creating plans to eliminating triggers for elopement behaviors while enhancing the communication methods used by staff to overcome the difference between life and death to those in their care. VALA then welcomed Kristopher Drew, Field Operations Manager, Virginia Department of Social Services & Margaret “Tess” Pittman, Licensing Administrator, Virginia Department of Social Services, to share insights on regulatory compliance data for Virginia’s assisted living communities, program and procedural updates for VDSS inspections, as well as resources to help them achieve and/or maintain compliance. One of VALA’s goals remains to help assisted living providers in “Navigating Compliance Through Communication and Collaboration.” With the increasing population numbers of residents with dementia and the recent construction renovations and developments of memory care units in senior living, VALA invited Sydney Palinkas, RAFT Dementia Education and Outreach Coordinator, Regional Older Adult Facilities Mental Health Support Team, to share an interactive presentation on better understanding and supporting residents with dementia.