What if our Dementia Care unit Looked, Acted and Felt like home?

I watched this video today and feel so challenged by it:

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=aYrMu3ujs-Y)

Just watching it makes me ask myself a few questions:

• Why do so many complex care/ assisted living facilities seem to look like ‘warehouses’ or empty and institutional boxes?
• Is the need to be ‘easy to clean’ and ‘durable’ and ‘safe’ the reasons?
• What evidence supports the need to make our care centers in such ways – lifeless, institutional – void of real human feeling, homey feeling places?
• What would it really take for every senior care facility to adopt these changes – and would these changes end up prolonging life, or making it of higher quality? More enjoyable for both the person living there and the people who work there?
• If safety and ‘licencing issues’ are the reason why we don’t see more of these places, what would it take for safety and licence to be honored while providing  true care for those who come to live with us?
• Where would I like to call home if I ever need to go to a complex care unit at some point in my life? I think the choice is obvious, isn’t it?

Maybe the secret to moving more of our care centers toward this kind of care is to simply and honestly ask ourselves that final question: if I were to end up in a care facility – where would I rather go? Where would I want my own parents to go if they needed this kind of care? What about my children?

IF we have trouble saying we’d like to be in that institutional box like location, why do we allow our seniors to be sent to them? Do unto others as you would have done to you.

Now…what will we do with this?

http://projects.thestar.com/dementia-program/index.html