Calabasas Center to Combine Care for Kids, Seniors

Calabasas will soon be home to a unique day-care facility that serves children and senior citizens and stresses the value of interaction between the two groups.

“We have a generation of people over 65 who feel depressed, and the reason they feel depressed is because they don’t feel useful,” Dr. Arnold Bresky said at a recent groundbreaking for the facility, which is scheduled to open in April.

Bresky, who for the last 25 years has practiced obstetrics and gynecology in the western San Fernando Valley, will run the facility with his wife, Phyllis, a marriage and family counselor.

Evergreen Generations, located on 12 acres off Old Topanga Canyon Road, will have a 24-crib nursery, according to Bresky. The for-profit facility is geared to accept as many as 100 clients. It will be open seven days a week.

“My whole idea is to get society back on the right track by going back to the extended family,” he said. “It worked for 5,000 years.”

The concept serves as a perfect solution for a working adult who has small children and must also care for an aging parent, Bresky said. Both can be dropped off at the facility in the morning and picked up at night.

The idea began as a result of high turnover among staffers at nursing homes, said Judy Wolf, adult day-care and intergenerational coordinator for the Mark Taper Joining Older and Younger Program, an intergenerational day-care center in Van Nuys, which opened about a year ago.

Because nursing home staffers could not find day care for their children, Wolf said, someone hit on the idea of combining child and senior day care, and the concept was born.

The idea works because seniors and children get along well together, Wolf said.

“They belong together,” she said. “That’s always been the way with grandparents and children. The children are very accepting and don’t have a lot of expectations. The elderly give them unconditional love.”

Interaction with children has proved to be beneficial to seniors in nursing homes, Wolf said. The seniors are often depressed because they are so dependent on others and sometimes won’t cooperate with staffers.

For example, seniors frequently respond well to children when asked to participate in activities such as drawing.

“Often, an elderly person won’t draw a picture for a staffer,” Wolf said. “But they will do it for a child.”