The Aging in Paradise Resource Center

Our mission is to provide a safe, caring environment which will serve as a center for ongoing education, support, service, and enrichment, with primary focus on the areas of memory loss, grief, care-giving, prevention, and socialization enabling those in our local community to live with as much dignity, health, and quality as possible.

MEMORY LOSS SCREENINGS

Memory Loss Screenings assist in identifying changes in memory that are not normal. Screenings can be completed by qualified personnel at the Longboat Island Chapel. Please call the Chapel office to set up an appointment. The number is 941-383-6491. 

Or you may call the Sarasota Memorial Hospital's Memory Disorder Clinic which provides free memory screenings at two locations (the Senior Friendship's Caregiver Resource Center located at 1820 Brother Greenen Way and the Memory Disorder Clinic at Sarasota Memorial's Insittute for Advanced Medicine located at 5880 Rand Boulevard, Suite 205). Call for an appointment at 941-917-7197.

MEMORY LOSS CAREGIVER'S SUPPORT GROUP

The Memory Loss Caregiver's Support Group will resume on Wednesday, November 4, at 11:00 a.m. This group is for caregivers of loved ones with memory loss, and meets every other week. While the caregiver is attending the support group, refreshments will be provided for the family member with memory loss. A social time will follow each meeting. Please bring your own brown bag lunch. This support group will be free of charge and open to all residents of Longboat Key and surrounding communities in Sarasota and Manatee Counties.

SHIFTING SANDS

Life, like sand, never remains static. Winds of happiness and sadness continually blow, altering both appearance and reality. Sadness erupts in many ways from life’s struggles, such as losing loved ones, a marriage, close friendships, or a job. Everyone responds to loss in their unique way, and most of us would concur that making it through a “sandstorm” of emotional pain can be very difficult.

The Shifting Sands Support Group can help us cope more effectively with losses in our lives. This is not the kind of group setting that says, “Come in and get help.” Rather, it is a time when you come — with your life experiences and coping mechanisms — with your story to share with others — and build upon one another’s developing strengths.

The primary purpose of the Shifting Sands Support Group is getting people together to share their common feelings and to see that they are not alone or isolated. As members, you bring new dimensions of support — your whole life perspective to the group.

The Shifting Sands Support Group is a process. See your unique and needed contribution as the process develops. Additional benefits will be getting to know each other, becoming more real, and being able to identify those “holes in the sand” — those lesser but still painful losses that can be “filled” by sharing special times together like birthdays and holidays when family isn’t physically present to “be there” for you.

Help shape Shifting Sands by attending and refining the process. Our sand castles are waiting to be built.

The Shifting Sands Support Group meets every Thursday from 3:00 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. at the Chapel. During season, an additional group meets on Tuesdays from 11:00 a.m. to 1:30 p.m.  

On Shifting Sands?

In need of friendship?

Challenges at home or with family?

Print Copy: Shifting Sands Brochure