Let us welcome you home to Everitt Gardens in St. Albert, AB

Optima Living—founded in 2007—owns and operates innovative seniors’ living communities throughout Alberta and BC, taking an unprecedented approach to senior life. Our unique company culture is one where both residents and team members are family.

Optima Living’s North Star, Let us welcome you home, speaks to our underlying principles and the experience seniors discover in our communities. When residents are home, they feel safe, respected, and welcome. Home is where one’s voice is heard, their views matter, and they have freedom of choice.

Optima Living’s mission, vision, and values—respect, dignity, teamwork, and doing the right thing—support and build upon our North Star. Optima Living operates over 2,200 beds providing congregate living options for seniors. These options range from subsidized to luxury, Independent to Assisted Living, Long-term Care to Memory Care, and Residential Mental Health.

Summary:

As the Recreation Therapist, you are responsible for providing recreation activities to promote physical, social, emotional, intellectual, spiritual, and cultural needs of our residents. This position reports to the General Manager. 

**Must be available to work between 9 am to 9 pm on weekdays and 12:30 pm to 8:30 pm on weekends.

What we are looking for

• Experience working with individuals with dementia and high behavioral needs.
• Experience in a residential care setting is preferred. 
• Ability to lead an interdisciplinary team through education, create program commitment and lead change of practice for program delivery. 
• Able to seek, learn and apply approaches of interventions with commitment and hands on approach to delivery. 
• Understand the triggers for behavior and create interventions to address through engagement of residents and team members. 
• Lead and implement education and training sessions and develop communication strategies for key stakeholders.  (Key stakeholders would families, staff, AHS Case Mangers, Physician, Pharmacist, Allied Health Team, CCPCS, Behaviour Support, GEM team and other interested parties) 
• Demonstrated creativity in development of strategies in alignment with personal interest and history. 
• Flexibility to adapt to the evolving needs of our male residents. 
• Assess individuals and evaluate the program based on established criteria and with knowledge of therapeutic recreation theories, assessment tools, and intervention strategies. 
• Completion of Therapeutic Recreation Degree program from an accredited educational institute.
• Registered with provincial Therapeutic Recreation association and in good standing. 
• Exceptional interpersonal skills with peers, residents, visitors, and operational partners 
• Superior organizational skills with the ability to handle multi-resident requests. 
• Superior oral and written communication skills.
• Demonstrate the ability to prioritize and problem solve.

Key responsibilities:
Resident Engagement and Event coordination

• Engage residents through conversation to identify recreation wants, needs, and abilities.
• Documentation recording of daily engagement, key achievements, challenges and setbacks/adaptation and any other pertinent information that the team would require.
• Conduct thorough assessments to understand the strengths, challenges (behaviours), interests and preferences, forming the basis for purposeful, meaningful therapeutic programming. 
• Implement and coordinate programs, including transportation.
• Coordinate church services, entertainment, and special events.
• Coordinate a yearly schedule of special events, lead decorating for special events.
• Plans recreation calendars in accordance with Optima Living’s 7 dimensions of wellness. 

Administration and Compliances

• Prepare monthly recreations reports as required.
• Recruit, orientate, schedule, and monitor Recreation aides and volunteers.
• Operate in compliance with the Occupational Health and Safety Act. 
• Provides a deep understanding of each resident via research-based assessments allowing team to provide meaningful activities as opposed to diversional activities.  
• Identifies similar interests, needs, and habits across the resident population, allowing teams to cultivate relationships and build skills. 
• Identifies residents that are at risk of social isolation, allowing teams to quickly respond with an individualized one-to-one program. 
• Monitors individual resident goals and achievements. 
• Tracks resident participation and engagement levels.  
• Enables communication between departments and circle of care. 
• Welbi enables team to spend less time on administrative tasks and more time enriching lives through meaningful leisure programming. 
• (Welbi) Metrics and reporting is accessible to all staff. 

Program Development

• Assessment and research to develop recreation plan.
• Monitor and support recreation team and/or volunteers in delivery of programs.
• Measure and evaluate success of program, redesign as needed. 
• Provide training for recreation team and/or volunteers.
• Develop and implement volunteer appreciation program.
• Other duties as assigned to support operational requirements.

Benefits of working with Optima Living

• Truly awesome teammates
• Welcoming and supportive work environment
• All the usual perks:
  -Dental care   
  -Extended health care
  -Life insurance
  -RRSP match
  -Paid time off
  -On-site parking
  -Employee assistance program
  -Vision care

 Conditions of Employment 

• Completion of CPR and First Aid is an asset. 
• Clear Police Information Check 
• Clear Vulnerable Sector Check 
• COVID-19 vaccination proof. This requirement may be waived if you have received an exemption through the provincial government.