Welcome to Alcoeur Gardens! The preferred choice for people with Alzheimer’s and other memory impairments
Safety, security, and beauty…in a home-like environment
Alcoeur Gardens provides professional and specialized care for residents with Alzheimer’s and other memory impairments. Our professionally trained and certified staff provides 24-hour care and supervision in a home-like atmosphere that equally blends safety, security, and beauty.
Safety
Our staffing exceeds state requirements, including specially-trained Certified Nursing Assistants and Registered Nurses. Our nurses supervise our medication management program and the certified medication aides. While we promote independent choice — encouraging our residents to use their remaining abilities — we also provide comprehensive assistance with bathing, meals, dressing and other activities of daily life.
Security
Security is reflected in the care and design of each facility while pictures on the walls are not only tastefully selected and placed, but are also designed to trigger our residents’ memories of historical places, people, and events. Other features include discreet security systems on all gates, windows, and doors, large bathrooms that allow for staff assistance, and specially-designed furniture. Every detail reflects our years of experience caring for Alzheimer’s and memory-impaired individuals.
Beauty
Inside you’ll find beautiful in-wall tropical fish tanks, private bedrooms, and private areas for family visits, modern custom-designed kitchens, and the latest flat-screen televisions. Outside are beautiful securely-gated gardens with bright flowers, tinkling waterfalls, outdoor wander paths, peaceful patios and porches, and green lawns.
Compensating for your loved one’s diminished abilities with dignity
Our Activities Staff assist residents with a full range of failure-free, success-oriented, activities and socialization opportunities. Plus, we have arrangements with visiting physicians, podiatrists, hairdressers, barbers, and entertainers that provide in-home services for your family’s convenience and delight. Each day is filled with stimulation that builds on our residents’ strengths.
A home like the home they have always known
Consider the following quote from the August 1, 2005 edition of Newsweek magazine. Journalists Claudia Kalb and Vanessa Juarez wrote about a new trend in home-like environments for the memory impaired:
“The newest thing in end-of-life care: Residences that look-and-feel like the house you’ve lived in all your life. The stand-alone house is a long-term-care facility for people with Alzheimer’s Disease and other forms of dementia, but it feels like a home.
It seems so obvious: Let people age the same way that they lived. From upscale residences in California to family-size nursing homes in Mississippi, living facilities for the elderly are undergoing an architectural and cultural makeover: Big, sterile institutions are out. Small, homey environments are in.
The advantages? Cozy living, privacy (including bedrooms and baths), and time for caregivers to get to know residents; not just their medical needs, but their life stories too.”
Denise Van Tassell, R.N. B.S. LNHA CALA
Ms. Van Tassell founded Alcoeur Gardens after having earned Nursing and Biology degrees from CUNY Staten Island and New York Regents College. She went on to gain years of experience working in various hospitals and nursing homes. With a natural love for seniors she was so often frustrated by the institutional feel in senior care facilities that seven years ago she decided to strike out on her own and create home-like alternative-living facilities for the memory impaired. From one facility in Matawan, NJ, Alcoeur Gardens has now grown to include several new, clean, comfortable home-like facilities in Ocean Township, Brick, and Toms River, NJ (with another facility under construction in Whiting, NJ).
Aside from her roles as Chief Operating Officer and Founding Partner of Alcoeur Gardens, Van Tassell is also a Certified Assisted Living Administrator (CALA) and Licensed Nursing Home Administrator (LNHA) and the President of Varis Health Consultants, a company approved by the Department of Health and Senior Services to provide education for Nursing Home Administrators in the State of New Jersey.
Julie Treadway, BS, CALA, DCPA
Julie is the Director of Operations for Alcoeur Gardens, a homelike community for persons with Alzheimer’s disease. She dedicates herself each day to preserving the dignity and respect of all residents that live within the four locations that Alcoeur Gardens operates within Monmouth and Ocean counties. Julie is a graduate of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro where she majored in Special Education and pursued a career in teaching.
Her introduction into the health care field came when she met Denise VanTassell, the owner of Alcoeur Gardens. Forged from this friendship, came an interest and then a love for residents of Assisted Living facilities especially those with Dementia. Julie is now a Certified Assisted Living Administrator, a Certified Boarding Home Operator, a Dementia Care Provider Associate and an Alzheimer’s Support Group Facilitator. The first Saturday of each month, she facilitates a Dementia/Alzheimer’s Support Group Meeting in their Ocean location.
Julie and her husband, John, enjoy spending time with their 2 cats, 2 dogs and fishing. In her spare time she loves to scrapbook and create jewelry. Julie’s vision for all persons suffering from Dementia/Alzheimer’s disease is for them to live out their life as independently as possible with dignity, respect, joy and love.Julie’s passion for teaching never left her, as evident in the fact that she regularly educates her staff on the nuances related to Alzheimer’s disease. This continuing education helps to ensure that Alcoeur Gardens is a premier care giving community for persons with Alzheimer’s disease.
Jackie Mertikas
Jackie is the Director of Marketing for Alcoeur Gardens, New Jersey’s Premiere Alzheimer’s Facility with locations in Monmouth and Ocean Counties. Jackie has over 22 years of marketing experience with many of those years spent as the Director of Marketing for Millennium Radio Shore Group. She was born in Brooklyn, New York and grew up in Bradley Beach, New Jersey. Jackie graduated from Towson State University, Towson, Maryland in 1988 with a B.S. in Communications. She is an assistant troop leader for Girl Scout Troop 1886 in Point Pleasant, New Jersey. Jackie is committed to promoting a warm and safe home for the geriatric population affected by Alzheimer’s and is looking forward to the grand opening of Alcoeur Garden’s newest facility in Toms River.
She currently lives in Point Pleasant with her husband Larry, and their two children Mackenzie, 11 and Julie, 8.
