When choosing a senior living community, older adults and their families often consider services, amenities, and care options. But life in a senior living community is really about the culture. At Someren Glen, that culture is built around a Citizenship Model through which residents do more than select activities or offer feedback. They contribute their talents, influence community life, and help create a place where everyone can experience purpose and belonging.

What Shapes Daily Life In A Senior Living Community?

Community culture encompasses the values, relationships, and everyday practices that shape how residents, team members, and families experience life together. It affects whether people feel heard, respected, and empowered. Daily life in a senior living community should feel like a true neighborhood, not an institution.

Senior living has evolved considerably from traditional models in which staff members made most decisions and residents primarily received services. Many communities now describe themselves as resident-directed or resident-driven. This fresh approach supports personal choice, autonomy, and opportunities for residents to help shape programs and routines.

A resident-driven senior living culture might include the following:

Choices about menus, schedules, and daily routines
Resident councils, surveys, and other ways to provide feedback
Programs developed around residents’ interests
Opportunities to suggest activities or community improvements
Respect for each resident’s preferences and independence

These practices represent important progress. However, Someren Glen uses CLC’s Citizenship Model of Community Living to take the idea further by recognizing that older adults are not simply consumers of services; they are citizens with meaningful roles to play, a distinction that fundamentally changes what everyday life in a senior living community can be.

How Does Citizenship Go Beyond A Resident-Driven Model?

Citizenship builds on resident-directed practices by adding shared responsibility, influence, and contribution. In a culture of citizenship, residents do not simply choose from options created by someone else. They help develop those options, welcome others into community life, share their abilities, and participate in decisions that affect their community.

Christian Living Communities developed its Citizenship Model around the view that every person, at every age and level of ability, has gifts, passions, talents, and experiences that can strengthen the larger community. Residents, team members, family members, and community partners all participate as citizens.

The CLC’s Citizenship Model for Senior Living encourages people to:

Contribute their time, knowledge, and talents
Exercise influence over community life
Accept meaningful responsibilities
Create and lead groups, projects, or events
Build relationships based on mutual respect
Continue learning, growing, and pursuing a sense of purpose

Citizenship does not require everyone to contribute in the same way. One resident may lead a committee, while another tends a garden, or chats with others over coffee. But each contribution has value, and together these contributions define what life in a senior living community can feel like at its best.

Why Do Purpose And Belonging Matter As People Age?

Purpose, belonging, and social connection are essential wherever one is in life. The World Health Organization defines healthy aging as developing and maintaining the abilities that support well-being in later life. These abilities include learning, decision-making, relationship-building, and contributing to society.

Strong relationships also support physical and emotional health. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, social connection may help reduce the risk of serious health concerns such as heart disease, stroke, dementia, depression, and anxiety.

A citizenship-based approach creates opportunities for connection through shared work and common interests, not simply through scheduled social events. Residents can build relationships while pursuing goals, helping others, and shaping the community they call home.

The result is a more age-positive environment, one that views aging as a stage of continued growth. Residents receive support when they need it without being characterized by a diagnosis or what they can no longer do.

What Does Life In A Senior Living Community Look Like At Someren Glen?

Citizenship becomes meaningful through daily action. At Someren Glen, residents have developed and led groups based on interests as varied as woodworking, gardening, knitting, singing, philanthropy, games, and books.

The community’s woodworkers help maintain the community woodshop, a resident-driven idea, and use their skills to create toys for children in need. Residents tend raised garden plots filled with favorite flowers, herbs, and vegetables. Others organize the library and gift shop, sing in the choir, or contribute to committees. These activities deliver enjoyment, and they also give residents ownership of and responsibility for community life.

Thayer Hubbard provides one example: After moving to Someren Glen, she continued her passion for gardening by caring for three garden plots. She brought flowers from her former Greenwood Village home and replanted them in the community. Her gardens allow her to keep doing something she loves while bringing beauty that her neighbors can enjoy.

Resident Carol Rauchwarger found another form of enrichment through relationships. A social person who enjoys learning from others, Carol described gaining new knowledge simply by talking with her Someren Glen neighbors. Her experience illustrates how citizenship can grow through curiosity, conversation, and friendship as well as formal leadership.

These residents and others featured in CLC’s Citizenship video demonstrate that older adults continue to bring valuable ideas, experiences, and abilities to their communities.

How Does Someren Glen Welcome New Citizens?

Moving to any senior living community can feel overwhelming. New residents must learn their way around, meet unfamiliar people, and discover where they fit. Someren Glen citizens recognized this challenge and created a welcoming solution.

The resident-led philanthropy committee organized a “Newer Neighbors” coffee chat to introduce recent arrivals to neighbors and resident-led groups. Over coffee and donuts, group leaders shared information about the choir, library, gift shop, committees, and other opportunities. New and longtime residents also talked about their backgrounds, interests, and reasons for choosing Someren Glen.

The event did more than just explain the activity calendar. It created a comfortable path to relationships, participation, and contribution. Conversations continued well beyond the scheduled end of the gathering, an encouraging sign that new connections were already forming.

The committee’s work also reflects Someren Glen’s culture of philanthropy, which encourages residents, families, and team members to share their time, talents, and resources for the benefit of others.

What Should Families Look For When Evaluating Life In A Senior Living Community?

A tour can reveal attractive residences and amenities, but understanding what daily life in a senior living community will actually feel like requires deeper questions. Older adults and their families may want to ask:

How do residents influence decisions?
Which groups or programs are resident-led?
Can residents start new initiatives based on their interests?
How does the community welcome new neighbors?
What opportunities exist to volunteer, mentor, or contribute?
How do residents and team members work together?
Can people participate regardless of changing abilities or care needs?

Pay attention to relationships as well. Do residents greet one another? Do team members know people as individuals? Can residents describe ways they have helped shape the community? The answers can reveal whether participation is primarily offered to residents or created with them.

Discover Life In A Senior Living Community Built On Citizenship

Someren Glen is a continuing care retirement community in Centennial, Colorado, offering independent living, assisted living, skilled nursing, rehabilitation, skilled nursing memory support, and in-home senior care. Across these services, the Citizenship Model reflects a consistent belief: every person has something meaningful to contribute.

Life in a senior living community shouldn’t just mean being kept busy. At Someren Glen, it means opportunities to lead, learn, build relationships, and make a difference. Residents here are not simply living in a community; they are helping create it.

Contact Someren Glen to schedule a visit and experience life in a senior living community built on citizenship firsthand.