Making Wellbeing Real
Research-informed tools to help long-term care teams embed wellbeing into everyday care.
Supporting wellbeing is essential in long-term care. For elders living in care settings, wellbeing is shaped every day by the people, routines, environments, and systems around them. Yet turning that understanding into consistent daily practice for every elder can be difficult without a shared framework and practical tools.
That is why AgingIN, in collaboration with Ariadne Labs, is introducing the Wellbeing Toolkit and a set of supporting implementation resources designed to help Green House Homes and other long-term care teams center care around what matters most: wellbeing.
Grounded in research and developed for real-world use, these tools help teams move beyond good intentions and bring wellbeing into everyday care conversations, care planning, and organizational practice. The toolkit centers on four domains of wellbeing—meaning, social connection, autonomy, and security—to help staff better understand residents beyond medical needs and support dignity, purpose, comfort, and connection in daily life.
What You’ll Find on This Page.
This resource collection is designed to help organizations introduce, apply, and sustain wellbeing-centered practices.
Wellbeing Toolkit
A research-informed toolkit developed by Ariadne Labs to help teams systematically center care around resident wellbeing.
Instructional Videos
Five videos designed to help teams understand the toolkit, the framework, and practical ways to begin using the resources.
Wellbeing Organizational Integration Toolkit
Additional implementation resources developed with AgingIN to help embed the Wellbeing Toolkit into organizational practice and support long-term sustainability.
Wellbeing Domains One-Pagers
Quick-reference resources focused on the four domains of wellbeing: meaning, social connection, autonomy, and security.
Explore the Resources.
Use the tools below to help your team build a common language around wellbeing, strengthen everyday care practices, and better support elders, families, and staff.
Making Wellbeing Real.
Supporting wellbeing is fundamental to person-directed living. While long-term care organizations strive to provide compassionate, individualized care, many lack a consistent way to understand what matters most to each elder and translate that understanding into everyday practice.
Too often, important information about a person’s identity, purpose, relationships, preferences, and sources of comfort lives in isolated conversations or in the memories of individual team members. Without a shared framework and intentional processes, these insights may not be consistently communicated across shifts, incorporated into care planning, or reflected in daily interactions.
The Wellbeing Toolkit, developed by Ariadne Labs, provides a practical, research-informed approach to making wellbeing visible, actionable, and sustainable. Rather than focusing solely on medical conditions or functional needs, the toolkit helps care teams better understand the whole person through four interconnected domains of wellbeing: meaning, social connection, autonomy, and security. These domains provide a common language for understanding wellbeing while recognizing that each person’s priorities are unique and may change over time.
Meaningful conversations are only the beginning. To truly influence quality of life, organizations need systems that support documenting what is learned, sharing insights across interdisciplinary teams, and using that information to guide care, daily routines, and decision-making. Wellbeing becomes not simply something individual staff members provide, but something the entire organization intentionally supports.
To help organizations move from individual conversations to organizational practice, AgingIN partnered with Ariadne Labs to develop a collection of complementary implementation resources that extend and support the Wellbeing Toolkit. Together, these resources help organizations introduce the toolkit, build staff understanding, integrate wellbeing into existing workflows, and sustain wellbeing-centered practices over time.
Whether your organization is beginning its wellbeing journey or strengthening an existing commitment to person-directed living, these tools provide a practical roadmap for creating a shared language, consistent practices, and organizational systems that keep what matters most at the center of care.
Why Wellbeing Matters.
Wellbeing is at the heart of person-directed care. It is central to quality of life and closely connected to clinical outcomes, staff engagement, and the daily experiences of elders and those who support them. When organizations intentionally prioritize wellbeing, they create environments where person-directed living can thrive. When teams have a practical way to understand what matters most to residents, they are better able to support daily experiences that strengthen connection, reinforce dignity, and improve the overall care environment, while connecting more deeply to the care they provide. The Wellbeing Toolkit offers a structured, research-informed approach that helps long-term care teams build this understanding and translate it into action.
The Four Domains of Wellbeing.
Meaning: Supporting purpose, identity, and feeling valued.
Social Connection: Strengthening relationships, belonging, and meaningful connection with others.
Autonomy: Honoring choice, personal preferences, and a sense of control in daily life.
Security: Creating environments where elders feel safe, comfortable, and cared for.
Together, these four domains offer a practical framework for understanding what matters most and guiding care in ways that feel more human-centered, responsive, and person-directed.
Designed for Practice.
These resources are intended for:
• Leaders, clinical staff, and operational team team members in long-term care.
• Providers seeking to strengthen person-directed living
• Organizations working to improve quality of life, staff engagement, and care outcomes
Whether your team is just beginning this work or looking to deepen an existing commitment to wellbeing, these tools are designed to support practical implementation.