Aged Care Insite Issue 96 | August-September 2016 | Seite 18

industry & policy

Dementia care model succeeds
with a focus on familiar
surroundings and individual needs
– now it’s coming to Australia.
Sharon Callister interviewed
by Dallas Bastian

A

Bringing it home

ustralian aged-care providers
are beginning to roll out a
dementia care model focusing on
enablement and independence.
The Butterfly Household Care Model
was pioneered in the UK by Dementia
Care Matters and aims to facilitate care
guided by residents’ interests, feelings and
emotions, rather than tasks.
Salvation Army Aged Care Plus was
selected as one of two Australian providers
to launch the model, along with Barunga
Village, located at Port Broughton on South
Australia’s Yorke Peninsula.
The model is live across two Salvation
Army Aged Care Plus centres – Mountain
View Aged Care Plus Centre at Narrabundah
in the ACT and The Cairns Aged Care Plus
Centre at Chapel Hill, Queensland. Its other
14 centres are soon to follow.
Aged Care Insite speaks with Aged Care
Plus chief executive Sharon Callister to
discuss what went into the implementation
of the model and the changes she expects
to see across the provider’s sites.

ACI: How and why did Salvation Army
Aged Care Plus decide to become
involved in the roll out of this model?
SC: First and foremost, we are always
searching for ways and opportunities to
provide better quality care, more presence
and care for our residents. Those phrases are
thrown around a lot, but we were looking for
some meaningful ways of doing it.
A few years ago, a number of us at
the Better Practice Awards witnessed
a presentation by Dr David Sheard, the
founder and chief executive of Dementia
Care Matters in the UK. Listening to him,
feeling his passion, the knowledge, the
stories that he gave of changes to people
and improvements to quality of life, we
were absolutely inspired. A while after
that, we were fortunate enough to meet
with Dr Sheard, and once you spoke to
the man it just became a compelling case.
We believe that providing the best quality,
person-centred care is absolutely [essential].
The Dementia Care Household Butterfly
model is absolutely the [plan] we felt much
in sequence [with]. We felt we needed to
proceed to implement it.
16 agedcareinsite.com.au