industry & policy
Designing a dementia village
Glenview Korongee aerial view. Photo: HESTA
What does it take to build a village dedicated to dementia?
Lucy O’ Flaherty interviewed by Dallas Bastian
Excitement over the idea of dementia villages has been bubbling in the aged care sector for years. Pioneered overseas in countries like the Netherlands, these care facilities resemble small contained towns, complete with amenities like cafes, beauty salons, theatres and supermarkets that residents are free to visit as they please. Now, plans have been unveiled for the Tasmanian suburb of Glenorchy to be home to one such village.
Not-for-profit aged care provider Glenview will transform an unused site in Glenorchy into a facility based on a cul-de-sac streetscape. Glenview chief executive Lucy O’ Flaherty said the Korongee village concept draws on a range of international best practice models, particularly the dementia village of De Hogeweyk in the Netherlands. She said residents in these homes live longer, eat better and take fewer medications, and Glenview hopes to see similar transformative health benefits at Korongee.
Korongee’ s 15 houses, each with six bedrooms, will be staffed by health professionals who dress casually and will be seen as homemakers, charged with making the experience as true to home living as possible. Residents within each house will be matched by their similar backgrounds, experiences, interests and skills.
“ A person who has worked as a tradesman all their life will most likely have a routine involving an early start and knocking off at 3pm. Alternatively, artists or creative folk may rise later and have later evenings, and weekends that are highly social – two lifestyles not necessarily conducive to each other,” O’ Flaherty said.
Glenview also intends to ensure residents will have more control over their routines or lack thereof. They will be welcome to wake up and go about their day in their own time.
“ If they want to make themselves a piece of toast in the middle of the night, they can do that,” O’ Flaherty said.
The development of the Korongee village is a partnership between Glenview, HESTA, Social Ventures Australia( SVA) and the federal government. HESTA has invested $ 19 million to finance the village through its Social Impact Investment Trust, managed by SVA, which aims to invest in opportunities that deliver both an appropriate financial return and a measurable social impact.
Debby Blakey, chief executive of HESTA, said not only will the venture provide a world-class facility for the community, it will benefit members by earning a return, and act as a model for investing in aged care that could attract other big players.
Blakey said:“ We heard about the great work Glenview was doing, and because HESTA has a specific focus on identifying investment opportunities in our sector, we were able to explore how we could support this fantastic project.”
Construction is planned to commence in early 2018, with the site to be complete by mid to late 2019.
Aged Care Insite sat down with O’ Flaherty to find out more about the village.
ACI: So, let’ s say Korongee is fully operational. As someone walks through it, what would they see? LO: If you can imagine walking through a regional neighbourhood: tree-lined streetscapes, people coming in and out of homes, getting on with their daily business. Maybe people walking down to the shops to grab a coffee, maybe people sitting on park benches having a chat. The activities you and I would normally see as we engage in our day-to-day events, that’ s exactly what you would see in this village, because what we’ re trying to create are real-life experiences, specifically for those living with dementia.
It’ s about understanding that familiarity and reminiscence and so forth are the important key factors for their success.
We know that distressed environments such as institutional or hospital environments only contribute towards people’ s ability to feel confused and anxious and so forth. So by creating familiar environments which are real life, we hope to de-stress those environments and actually give people a better life.
What role do staff play? How will working in Korongee differ from previous or more traditional roles? Well, it’ s taken us about five years to get to where we are today, and we’ ve looked to not just what happens within our own state, but what happens nationally, and we’ ve gone overseas, to Europe and the United States, and we’ ve taken the best of what operates in other countries and other states. We’ ve been able to distil that down to this new workforce, which is actually homemakers.
So, as opposed to someone being a carer and having a fairly clearly defined role, staff working in the Korongee project will actually be homemakers. They’ ll be doing the cooking, the planning, the personal care. They’ ll be running the activities. They’ ll very much be living with the resident where they’ re at. So if somebody decides they want to make scones, well that’ s what you
12 agedcareinsite. com. au