Bancroft NeuroRehab plans move to Mount Laurel

For more than two decades, Bancroft NeuroRehab in Cherry Hill has been helping adults with brain injuries relearn such everyday tasks as cooking, cleaning, walking, and speaking.

The highly individualized program also helps patients, including veterans, strengthen skills needed to reenter the workforce. The center treats people with an array of conditions, including Alzheimer's, dementia, and hypoxic and traumatic brain injuries.

"After acquiring a neurological illness, you need to relearn things you could do before," Cynthia Boyer, NeuroRehab executive director, said Friday. Just using a microwave can be a challenge.

The work will go on, but with a change in scenery.

In about two months, the program expects to relocate from its current small space, with hardly any windows, to a bright new area nearly twice the size in Mount Laurel.

"It's even more than night and day," said Boyer, comparing the new 18,000-square-foot facility to the current Lebensfeld NeuroRehab center in Cherry Hill.

"We didn't count them, but I said I wanted lots of windows," Boyer said.

The new location will provide space for physical and occupational therapy, a technology room, cafeteria, a full-size kitchen, rooms for speech therapy, an activity room, and five group-learning rooms - each with an Internet-connected flat-screen TV. In these classroom-like areas, cognitive therapists can work with clients in subjects such as math, history, and current events.

"It gets people used to following a schedule again," Boyer said.

The new Resnick Center, funded through a $2 million donation from the Resnick Family Foundation, the capital budget, and donations and other fund-raising, will allow Bancroft to work with more veterans with brain injuries through its post-acute brain injury rehabilitation program.

Though veterans only account for a small percentage of current clients, Boyer expects that number to grow.

"My hypothesis is, that steady flow will increase," she said.

Set to open in January, the center will start out with between 65 and 75 clients, most of whom are already attending the Cherry Hill location, said Mark Alessandrini, NeuroRehab project manager. Since the Mount Laurel location is more than twice as large as the Cherry Hill site, Boyer said, "we hope to get it up to 100-plus people."

Pointing to a room that will contain workout equipment and video games that will help clients develop motor skills, Alessandrini said, "This will be a real treat for them."

The Cherry Hill location, on Kings Highway, will continue to be occupied by Bancroft, hosting staff training and community vocational services for adults. The main Haddonfield campus remains on the market for sale, officials said.