CASSOPOLIS — A new speaker series is coming to Cass County to allow residents to learn more about long-term and eldercare.

Next week, Cass County Medical Care Facility, a government-run nursing home located at 23770 Hospital St., Cassopolis, will begin hosting twice-monthly information sessions on various topics related to patient care. The courses, starting next Thursday, Dec. 26, will be hosted from 6 to 6:30 p.m. on the first and last Thursday of each month. The sessions are free and open to the public.

“What we are doing is having our directors host presentations of different topics,” said Gene Sallee, operations specialist at Cass County Medical Care Facility. “The general public is welcome to come, and we encourage that, as well as staff.”

The first session will cover the subject of housekeeping and laundry in long-term care. Future session topics will include: dementia 101, how to engage residents with dementia, maintenance topics relating to long-term care, food and nutrition, wounds and skin problems in long-term care, financial services and many more.

“We have a wide variety and numerous topics that we are going to be discussing,” Sallee said. “Hopefully, this will be a way for the public to come out and get a little bit of knowledge. We want the public to get a general knowledge of what dementia really means and how to engage residents and what our five-star rating really means. … Families need to be knowledgeable about what is going on with their family members.”

The idea for the speaker series was borne out of a desire by staff at Cass County Medical Care Facility to host more programming, Sallee said. As a county-owned facility, Sallee added that staff members believe it is important to be a part of and education the community.

“We work in the community as a whole, and many of our residents are from within the county,” he said. “As our population gets older, we want them to be knowledgable.”

Sallee said he hopes the program will be successful. Should people respond well to it, he said Cass County Medical Care Facility would consider extending the sessions from 30 minutes to an hour.

“We are excited to see how this goes. We hope this will be an ongoing thing for the public’s knowledge,” he said. “My hope is that [the presentations] continue to grow and are useful for the public that comes out to see them.”

As he prepares for next week’s first session, Sallee said he would invite anyone interested to attend.

“I encourage people to come out and attend this series for their own knowledge and to interact with staff and residents here at the facility,” Sallee said. “They will gain a lot of knowledge that might not have had a chance to learn before.”