Partly to mostly cloudy skies with scattered thunderstorms during the evening. Low 73F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 60%..

Partly to mostly cloudy skies with scattered thunderstorms during the evening. Low 73F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 60%.

Danielle Damato Doty with the “Modes of Travel” kit. Damato Doty is supervisor of the Central Ridge Library in Beverly Hills.

The Art Lover kit. It includes the book, “Art That Changed the World”; a classical music CD; Famous Painting flashcards; a watercolor paint set, a brush, and watercolor paper; an art DVD, and an Etch-a-Sketch.

Patrons who check out a Compassionate Care Kit also receive copies of Debbie Selsavage’s books, “Coping With Dementia,” and “Dementia and Firearm Safety,” as well as some word search activity sheets. Selsavage is president of Coping With Dementia and a director of Dementia Education.

Danielle Damato Doty with the “Modes of Travel” kit. Damato Doty is supervisor of the Central Ridge Library in Beverly Hills.

The Art Lover kit. It includes the book, “Art That Changed the World”; a classical music CD; Famous Painting flashcards; a watercolor paint set, a brush, and watercolor paper; an art DVD, and an Etch-a-Sketch.

Patrons who check out a Compassionate Care Kit also receive copies of Debbie Selsavage’s books, “Coping With Dementia,” and “Dementia and Firearm Safety,” as well as some word search activity sheets. Selsavage is president of Coping With Dementia and a director of Dementia Education.

Where can you put a train together, paint a watercolor, plant a flower, and read a book about early American tools?

Try Citrus Libraries. The library has teamed with Dementia Education Inc. of Citrus County to provide for the checkout of 14 differently themed Compassionate Care Kits to benefit caregivers and their loved ones with dementia, Alzheimer’s and other memory issues.

There are multiple copies of several of the kits.

Each kit is like a treasure box, designed to tune into the interests of someone with memory problems, offering the person a chance to talk about the topic, reminisce and engage in hands-on activities.

The themes range from “Musical Memories” to “Sewing Good Thoughts,” and include “Friendly Felines,” “Caring Canines,” “Spring Into Gardening,” and “Salute to Service,” as well as eight other themes.

You can see what’s available, find out if a kit is checked out, and reserve a kit to pick up by going to the library system’s home page, www.citruslibraries.org and clicking on “Compassionate Care Kits.” On the page that comes up, if you scroll down a bit, you’ll see the kind of kits available. If you click on a kit, you’ll see a spot where you can place a hold on it. Of course, you also can just go to a library branch and see what kits are available.

In the “Modes of Travel” kit, for example, you’ll find an oversized picture book, “Our World in Pictures: Cars, Trains, Ships & Planes,” by Clive Gifford. It’s a big book with lots and lots of pictures of all kinds of vehicles.

You’ll also find in the kit a six-piece train set, a puzzle of a train station, a bag of patterns that require a shoelace border for you to weave, another bag of geometric puzzle pieces, two different DVD sets about trains, and a model post office truck and UPS truck that you can push around your living room.

The “Art Lover” kit has its own big book, “Art That Changed the World: Transformative Art Movements and the Paintings That Inspired Them” by DK Publishing, full of pictures of many well-known artworks.

The kit also contains a set of 30 famous painting flashcards, a set of DVDs about art, a set of CDs of classical music, a set of watercolor paints, a brush, some watercolor paper, and an Etch-a-Sketch.

The kits with their books, DVDs, and items such as the trains, trucks, and Etch-a-Sketches are meant to be returned within two weeks, just like a regular library book.

However, there is a “consumable” in some of the kits that patrons can keep – like the watercolor painting you might produce.

Each person who checks out a kit also receives a book by founder and president of Coping With Dementia Debbie Selsavage, who is a director of Dementia Education. The book, “Coping with Dementia: Thoughts on the Philosophy, Principles, and Practice of Person-Centered Compassionate Care,” is a collection of the columns she’s published in the Citrus County Chronicle. Her book, “Dementia and Firearm Safety,” as well as some word search activity sheets, also are included.

Region Manager of the Homosassa and Lakes Region (Inverness) libraries Adam Chang said the library staff worked with Ed Youngblood and Selsavage of Dementia Education to create kits that were “simple but not too childish, that would help people’s fine motor skills.”

Youngblood and Chang explained how the kits came to be.

Chang said the library learned about a grant available through a subchapter of the American Library Association to provide programming for people with dementia. The library staff came up with the idea to provide kits, applied for funding, didn’t get the grant, but had consulted Dementia Education representatives when developing the grant.

Chang said a few libraries across the country are providing kits for caretakers and their loved ones with memory problems.

Dementia Education representatives already were hosting a “Coping Connection” support group at the branch libraries for those caring for a loved one with Alzheimer’s disease or dementia and offering an “ABC of Dementia” workshop to library patrons.

Selsavage has trained library staff about how to provide compassionate care to those with memory problems.

Youngblood, the president of Dementia Education, said after the library didn’t get the grant through the American Library Association, the Dementia Education board felt the program was important and approved spending $3,000 to support the kits.

“We just think this is a novel and wonderful idea,” he said. “I’m not sure Citrus County fully understands what a fantastic library we have. They have an incredible attitude toward public service.”

Chang said it’s a trend that libraries across the United States are circulating more items than just books and DVDs. For example, Citrus Libraries recently started a Seed Library program at the Homosassa and Lakes Region branches, for which patrons can receive four free packets of seeds at each visit.

The Compassionate Care Kits tap into the recognition that Citrus County has a large elderly population and they and their potential caregivers need support, according to Chang.

“We recognize the library can be so much more,” he said.

The library is continuing to explore ways to be “the place where people go for a lot of resources, that place in the community where everyone is welcomed,” Chang said.

Both Chang and Youngblood said the public response to the kits has been positive.

Although Youngblood described Dementia Education as “a little nonprofit, scraping by for resources,” he said if his group continues to have the opportunity and the resources, it plans to keep the Compassionate Care kit program operating indefinitely.

“We’ll do everything we can. We think it’s such a good idea, and they’ve done it so well,” Youngblood said.

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