With thousands of residents and team members receiving a COVID-19 vaccine, we’re looking for new ways to make life interesting and exciting – with safety our top priority. We provide a variety of in-person and virtual options for residents to enjoy, all throughout the day.
Here are just a few of the innovative ways we’re offering virtual lifestyle options for residents who choose them:
Virtual Experiences
Each week we roll out exciting new “Virtual Experiences,” through the exclusive My W Life resident app. In the app or on www.MyWLife.org, we’re offering residents a variety of enriching experiences to enjoy using their phone, tablet or computer. This is all thanks to online resources like Google’s Arts & Culture project and cultural institutions all around the world. We’re curating the most interesting and high-quality resources, selected by our expert Resident Experience staff in communities throughout the state.
“It’s hard practicing social isolation for long periods of time, so with all community lifestyle events discontinued, we had to come up with something else just as great,” said Mario DeLuca, Director of Resident Experience for Westminster Communities of Florida. “These virtual tours are just amazing!”
Residents at all of our Continuing Care Retirement Communities have access to the My W Life app. When they log in and tap the “Virtual Experiences” icon, they’re presented with choices ranging from tours of London and New York City, to enriching virtual tours of museums, and animal cams from aquariums and zoos.
In-Home Dining
For older adults throughout the country, as we watch the spread of the coronavirus (COVID-19), a simple trip to the grocery store can induce anxiety. But at Westminster Communities of Florida, residents have lots of ways to make sure they get nutritious food and basic staples.
One way is our new dining delivery program, providing refrigerated, reheatable, nutritious and tasty meals delivered to residents’ doorstep. This special program helps minimize the risk to residents by bringing delicious and nutritious meals to them in their own home, and respects social distancing, as ordered by the state of Florida.
We rolled out this in-home dining program in March, and rave reviews have been coming in from residents ever since. We’re offering a special menu comprised of entrées that will chill and reheat well, from some of the favorite dishes off our regular seasonal menu. For each meal, residents receive an entrée, a vegetable side, a starch side, a salad and a dessert. Learn more about how we’re making dining fun!
We also know that sometimes, a person needs a loaf of bread, a gallon of milk or a roll of toilet paper — the most basic grocery needs. For those essential items, we’re opening up new “pop-up” grocery stores for residents to shop. These pop-up groceries are conveniently located in the community, just a trip down the elevator or around the corner, and limited to one resident at a time for safety. Groceries can be paid for using either credit card or charged to their monthly bill via key fob. Learn more about our pop-up grocery stores
We are continually adjusting what we’re offering. We recently also expanded the Pop-Up Grocery program to our team members, knowing that it’s important for them to feel safe when they bring home food and essentials for their families.
Virtual Fitness Classes
Social distancing doesn’t have to mean inactivity. At Westminster Communities of Florida’s 10 active living communities, fitness teams are sharing a common objective: Keep residents fit and active during a pandemic. From filming videos of their wellness classes to conducting classes that residents can participate in from their balconies or their front doors at a safe distance, our teams are working hard to provide residents every opportunity to stay fit and safe.
Wellness teams are filming fitness classes and providing the videos to residents on the exclusive MyWLife app, on YouTube, and even airing them throughout the day on the in-house television station.
“We have 20 videos ranging from chair yoga to cardio low-impact, standing stretches and yoga poses, balance class, sculpt and tone, and how to walk with Nordic poles,” said Jeri Jo Fox, Fitness Coordinator at Westminster Woods on Julington Creek in Jacksonville. “We’re keeping them busy with a variety of exercises.”
Fox said that anyone can look on YouTube or pop in a fitness video, but it may be an unfamiliar routine or instructor. By creating our own videos with exercises appropriate to our residents’ fitness level, Westminster communities can offer residents the familiarity with instructors and exercises they already enjoy.
We’re proud to help residents find new ways to continue to enjoy life-enriching and intellectually stimulating opportunities, even at this challenging time of coronavirus-related disruption. It’s all part of our My W Life program for whole-person wellbeing of body, mind and soul. Read more about My W Life today.
