Through the Years

In 1984, a certified hospice and palliative care nurse, Lin Noyes Simon RN, PhD, founded Insight Memory Care Center (the Family Respite Center at the time). While leading a caregiver support group, Lin realized the lack of community resources and support available for individuals with Alzheimer’s disease. She decided to act.

At the time it was highly innovative to start an Alzheimer’s specific adult day center. The adult day center concept wasn’t brand new, but dementia specialization was. Over the first year of operation, we quickly offered day center services five full days a week. No one was turned away who needed care for a loved one, even when he or she couldn’t pay. Lin was motivated by her passion, knowledge and supportive friends and community. People volunteered their time, helped spread the word and made donations to keep the lights on and staff paid.

From 1988 to 1992, Insight took part in the Dementia Care and Respite Services Program, one of only seventeen national grantees. DCRSP was a four year grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation in collaboration with the Wake Forest University School of Medicine. It was the first national demonstration project to focus on day center and respite services for persons with dementia. The lessons learned from this program were used to form the Partners in Caregiving: The Dementia Services Program publication, disseminating lessons learned to adult day centers across the United States.

Insight’s second location, in a church in Falls Church, provided the home for the center for over twelve years. The programs were held in two rooms of the church, with a few offices for staff. This was a better location than the previous but still had its challenges. The rooms were not secure, the bathroom facilities were shared and the rooms that they used were used by others in the church, which meant that all program supplies had to be cleaned up and put away nightly.

In 2004, we moved from our church basement location to a dedicated facility in Fairfax, Virginia. This location provided a safe, secure, and therapeutic environment for those affected by memory impairment. It also provided additional space for support group meetings and education classes. Insight was named one of the best small charities in the Washington Region by the Catalogue for Philanthropy for the first time in 2006, an honor we have continued to receive every four years. In 2013, Insight was honored to be recognized as the Adult Day Center of the Year from the National Adult Day Services Association, a national award given to one outstanding and innovative center, recognized as “best practice.”

In January 2015, we relocated our center to a property in Fair Oaks on Pender Drive. The new center provides 15,000 square feet of space compared to our previous 5,000 square feet, allowing us to expand all of our services. The larger facility has allowed us to start several new programs since, including a Memory Cafe that meets twice a month and offering the SHARE program for families with a recent diagnosis to plan for future care. Most recently we have partnered with Encore Creativity for Older Adults to offer the Sentimental Journey Singers choral program.

In March 2020, in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Insight quickly began offering almost all of our programs virtually to keep participants and families connected. Insight was able to safely re-open our doors in June 2020, and remained the only adult day center open in our area for over a year. Virtual programs have continued ever since to keep families connected both near and far!

In January 2022, Insight Memory Care Center celebrated a milestone event with the opening of its second location, an Early Stage Center in Sterling, Virginia. The organization has grown significantly since caring for the first three participants in the basement of a church, and this new center in Sterling represents the first time programs have expanded beyond partnerships and shared spaces to a dedicated, second center.