A sense of community. Senior living communities must allow for mission, mutuality, and myth

Most persons move to senior living communities because they want to regain the sense of "community" lost when they left their families, neighborhoods, and community networks. By focusing on mission, mutuality, and myth, the organization can offer residents this feeling of belonging. The mission statement must become the heart of the organization. It should represent both resident and staff expectations and goals. Community also develops around mutuality, a life-sustaining and growth-promoting matrix of care, comprising resident-staff care, staff-resident care, resident-resident care, and staff-staff care. Myth, the third component of community, is a way of making sense of what is often a senseless world and enhancing people's feeling of community. To facilitate coping with the stresses of aging, senior living community staff must sustain and promote myths, especially religious myths, images, and symbols. St. Leonard Center, Dayton, OH, is a senior living community that has incorporated these three components into its organization to make it a community in the true sense.