Care homes

This morning I spent a very enjoyable few hours with my mom at an art class that is held once every two weeks at her care home. We did watercolour portraits of other residents - quite challenging and interesting to see how varied the approaches were. This is one of several activities that they arrange on a regular basis to help their residents stay connected and mentally stimulated. My mom moved here five years ago because she seemed to need a higher level of care than she could manage, living on her own, and she was starting to become quite isolated and lonely, even though she had a circle of acquaintances in her previous retirement village.

Her present care home has a very sensitive balance between communal living and privacy: my mom has her own room with space for a couch and occasional chair, a display cabinet and the kist she was given when she got married. It also has its own garden area that adjoins a communal garden, with a private outdoor seating area and space for the roses she was gifted by my sister. Access to her room is from a private passage with a small number of rooms, adding to the sense of privacy, a theme that has governed the entire design of the home. 

My mom's private room with all her favourite furniture

The frail-care section also aims for the maximum privacy, although in this part, optimal nursing care is the priority. This is achieved through smaller rooms with two to four occupants and linked up with CCTV that is monitored from the various nursing stations throughout the building. The dispersal of nursing staff also plays an important part in the residents' feeling like they are getting individual care and helps to minimise the sense of institutional living.

The mid-care residents have their meals in a communal dining room, with a view over a park - the dining area is arranged with tables seating four to six people, and the residents are encouraged to sit at the same table for all their meals so that they form bonds with a smaller group. The dining area also doubles up as a space for doing chair yoga once a week. 

The dining area with a view over the park

There are also two lounges, one predominantly for the residents of the frail-care section, although this is very popular with some of the mid-care residents, including my mom, who likes to knit while watching television with some of her friends from the frail-care section. Both of the lounges have televisions, comfortable chairs, and tables with upright chairs for activities. The other lounge is very popular for Bridge and Canasta games and twice a week they engage in word games with a facilitator.

One of the lounges with the table for the Bridge club

The home has a small chapel which is used at least once a week for church services: the home has an Anglican foundation, so visiting priests from the surrounding parishes take it in turns to run the service and to provide pastoral care through the week. The events of the religious calendar play an important part in keeping the residents connected and having a sense of the wider community, and these are interspersed with secular events such as picnics and an annual fete. 

The chapel with the library in the foreground

Key dates are celebrated with special meals with family members invited, to enhance the feeling of community and allow the residents contact with a variety of age groups. Likewise, birthdays are special events, with cake and flowers cut from the well-stocked garden for the birthday celebrant.

At my mom's care home, the staff have created a visually stimulating environment, without appearing over-designed or self-conscious. All the corridors have art works, most of them done by very talented residents, and the furniture is arranged to be comfortable but varied in design, making for a homely atmosphere.

In the design for any facility for the aged, the biggest challenge is to strike a balance between optimal care and dignity, between surveillance and privacy. At my mom's home, this is achieved both spatially, through making a number of nursing stations throughout the complex, and through the use of technology. The complex is also small enough that all the staff know the residents by name and know their medical history and special needs.

It is also so important to ensure that residents have a stimulating environment, with a variety of activities that are challenging, but allow for a range of skills and a gradual diminishing of capability over time. The people who run these activities need to make sure that their participants don't become overwhelmed or try to achieve at the level that they could when they were younger, a problem that my perfectionist mom suffers from. Our art classes are run by an excellent teacher, with a very delicate approach and a fine understanding of when to push his people to experiment and when to simply give encouragement and praise.