KAIROS Dance Theater leads a movement exercise before celebrating Sara Barsel’s AARP Andrus Award win for her work with RSVL A/D in 2024. Image via ACT on Alzheimer’s on Facebook.
Sara Barsel spoke to the Roseville Reporter about the resources the Alzheimer’s and Dementia Community Action Team provides to the Roseville community and beyond.
By Ava Hefferon — Reporter
The City of Roseville is home to a large community of people facing Alzheimer’s disease and dementia. The Alzheimer’s and Dementia Community Action Team (RSVL A/D), beginning in 2013, has changed how the community faces the challenges associated with the diseases.
Sara Barsel, a co-founder of RSVL A/D is still devoted to providing resources to this community today. The initial goal of the program was to address the rising problem in the community and create more transparency between different agencies working with Alzheimer’s and dementia.
“One of our goals was to connect service providers so that they could actually know what the others were doing in the community and work together,” Barsel said “The second was to provide information about what services actually were available, so that people who were impacted could find them.”
This program was unlike any other city offered, according to Barsel.
“The city of Roseville, as far as we know, was the only municipality in the country to support this population by providing that kind of information,” she said.
RSVL A/D’s resources have expanded from their initial start. What initially started as flyers has transformed into live webinars, memory kits, support groups and work with Minneapolis-Saint Paul International Airport on spreading awareness on Alzheimer’s and dementia patient travel.
Memory kits are essential for caregivers when caring for patients with Alzheimer’s and dementia. The kits have checklists, locations and information on support groups and suggestions on safe locations when travelling. The specific air travel memory kit provides additional information regarding interacting with dementia patients in airports.
“Memory Minders kits contain graded activities for people with dementia to be able to do with somebody else or by themselves, and also some resources for a caregiver to educate them about things,” said Barsel. “We have them for people who are severely impacted, mildly impacted and not so impacted.”
A recent project for RSVL A/D was a kiosk in the Ramsey County Library during Family Caregiver Awareness Month in November. The kiosk included books about caregiving for Alzheimer’s and dementia and flyers that the Library put together.
“They took memory reminder kits so people could see what it was,” said Barsel. “They took some books that they identified as useful surrounding Alzheimer’s. They took flyers that say dementia-friendly travel with QR codes. One QR code is to the Dementia-Friendly Working Group’s resources for travel, and the other is to the Hidden Disability Sunflower.”
The Hidden Disability Sunflower, a way for the public to recognize a hidden disability, was something that Barsel wanted airports to recognize.
“Groups that sponsor [the Hidden Disability Flower] recognize and train their staff for about 10 minutes. It basically comes down to if you see somebody wearing the sunflower, you ask them, how can I help you? They’re entitled to more time, a little patience. It has gotten global recognition and distribution, particularly through airports,” Barsel explained.
In her work with Minneapolis St-Paul Airport, Barsel was able to get the Hidden Disability Sunflower recognized.
“I asked them, if we put together best management practices for how to do security screening for people with dementia coming through and such, would you use that? And the answer was yes,” Barsel said.
Work with the Ramsey County Library will hopefully continue this spring with live presentations aimed towards educating caregivers.
The work of Sara Barsel and RSVL A/D does not go unnoticed in Roseville by other agencies. Despite COVID-19 pausing a lot of services, there are still many organizations that RSVL A/D still partners with, including FamilyMeans, the City of Roseville and residential housing sites.
In 2023, Barsel won the AARP Andrus Award for Community Service for Minnesota for her work with RSVL A/D.
The City of Roseville has allowed this program to prosper, according to Barsel.
“There’s very little money that goes into any of it. The City of Roseville pays for printing, and their staff putting in the time and energy to keep this on the website is invaluable,” she said.
Barsel added that volunteer work is essential with RSVL A/D in order to keep it going.
“There are fewer of us. People are aging out, they’re retiring. It’s very hard to attract new people to work on any of this,” she said.
Those interested supporting RSVL A/D can volunteer and learn more here
