The Colony Senior Center on Augusta Street serves adults 50 and older from 8 AM to 3 PM on weekdays. Its model works for people who can join an activity, follow a schedule and find their own way home. Dementia changes each of those. A parent may start losing track of the day, wander from a group, forget whether they ate, or need help in the restroom. Those are signs they need supervision, not just company.  

A dementia day program keeps the parts that made the senior center good, the music, the games and the friends, and adds the parts that keep a person with memory loss safe: trained staff on hand all day, a licensed nurse, and a ratio of one staff member to every five members. Our day runs from 7:30 AM to 5:30 PM, long enough to cover a full workday. 

Since music is already part of senior life in The Colony, it may help to know it sits at the center of our day too. Members sing together every day, take part in music programs, and dance when live entertainers visit.  

The way staff talk to members matters just as much. Our team is trained in dementia care techniques, including acceptance of behavior, reassurance, and cues and prompts that help a member do things for themselves. Our article on compassionate communication explains the approach in more depth. 

For many families in The Colony, the hardest part of caregiving is not the forgetting. It is the shower. Bathing, shaving and hair care can become daily battles with a parent who no longer understands why they are needed. At our center, members can have showers, men’s shaves, a shampoo and blow dry, nail care with a hand and arm massage, and foot care with a foot and leg massage. Licensed salon services are available as well.  

Handing this part of the day to trained staff can take the fight out of your mornings. See our personal care services page for the details.

From City Hall on Main Street (FM 423), the fastest route heads south on FM 423 and Josey Lane, east along Plano Parkway and Midway Road to the President George Bush Turnpike, then east to Coit Road and over on Campbell Road to our center near Custer and Campbell. OpenStreetMap routing measures it at 15.3 miles and about 27 minutes with light traffic. The Turnpike is a toll road.  

It is the longest drive of any city on our north side, so we suggest full days of up to ten and a half hours for $100, which keep round trips to one a day.