Memory care residents partner with students to make dog toys

The residents of Harvester Place, a memory and dementia care facility in Burr Ridge this week helped dozens of summer camp students in making dog chew toys for local homeless dogs.

Danyanique Hughes, the life engagement director for Harvester Place, said the program was among the first since the pandemic to introduce outsiders to their residents.

“It was great, actually,” she said. The program had been ongoing and she said the residents enjoyed interacting with the children.

“The last few sessions have been great. The campers have been with us three visits, two in June and this was their last visit unfortunately.”

Harvester place has 44 residents and 12 kids from the Community House Summer camp participated in the craft workshop.

Not only was the event the first in a long while since COVID-19, Hughes said it was one of the largest interactive events Harvester Place has hosted.

“We’ve always had Girls Scout campers and different groups come, but we’ve never organized this large of a group for a large while,” Hughes said. “They were supposed to come last year but that was canceled due to the pandemic.”

The project was especially meaningful as many of the memory care residents had owned pets and Therapaws, with the Hinsdale Humane Society regularly visits Harvester House. The dogs are an important part of the routine at the House.

“Right now, we do visit once a month,” said Hughes. “A lot of our residents have very close relationships with pets. One of our residents would raise and show dogs in Georgia.”

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And it was an opportunity for volunteers. Before the pandemic, Hughes said residents would volunteer regularly in the community as giving back is itself a sort of therapy as it allows residents to feel connected and contribute to the area.

“We used to volunteer at the Northern Illinois Food Bank,” Hughes said. “They would give us projects to do for an hour, or hour and-a-half sessions, but with the pandemic, everything got shut down so we were trying to find creative ways we could do things from afar.”

Since then, Hughes said she’s been trying to reach out to other nonprofits, but this is the first project that worked out. She said it was a hit, but she’s hoping for more opportunities to partner with local volunteers.

“I think it’s just kind of slowly getting back into the swing of things within the limitations of what we have, but if we can find anything in terms of intergenerational, were looking for ways to give back to the community.”

Hughes said the residents light up when they get the opportunity to interact with anyone from the area. Some folks don’t have family who can visit regularly and even those who do enjoy working with outsiders.

“Everybody lights up and they start to reminisce and they talk about their family members,” she said. “One resident used to be a teacher and she was telling the camper what she used to teach and what kind of work she would have given the camper.”

In all, the campers made some 45 chew toys, all crafted from T-shirts donated by, again, the community at large.

“We collected a bunch,” Hughes said. “One of our managers, she knew of someone who has a drapery business and they took up a collection for us and we asked around if anyone had any old T-shirts. All you do is, you cut off the top of the T-shirts and you cut it into four strips and then you have the material to make the tug toys.”

But dog toys weren’t the point. Hughes said she wants the public to understand that even people with memory issues can still contribute to their communities.

“It doesn’t matter what level you are or what type of impairment, anyone is very capable of doing a lot,” she said. “Our residents do care about being able to give back to the community.

“People think people with memory impairment can’t do a lot, but they’re still able to do everyday things.”