I am now in my third week of getting to know everyday life at The Views, an innovative long-term care home in Comox on Vancouver Island. It is a publicly funded facility operated by Providence Living, a Catholic non-profit organization.
From Institutional Care to Households
Inspired by the Dutch concept of dementia villages, it has managed to find a compromise between a large facility (156 beds) and an individualized, home-like environment that respects the freedom and needs of people living with dementia.
The sprawling building is unique in its layout Inside are thirteen separate households for twelve people each. At the heart of every household is a kitchen connected to a living area. This is where people cook, eat, chat, fold small items of laundry or take part in creative activities. At the centre of the building is an open square with a chapel, a community space, a playground, and herb and flower gardens. Both the layout and the daily running of the home reflect its own care model, simply called Home for Us (H4U).
Home Is Above All a Feeling
The Views moved into its new building just two years ago, leaving behind a traditional institutional setting where sixty people would gather in the dining room at the same time. Here, most of them have blossomed. Lurie, a nutrition specialist, has tears in her eyes as she tells me about a woman who never ate outside her room in the old building but now enjoys meals with her neighbours. She says:
“My job is not to count calories and protein, but to make sure people enjoy their food and take pleasure in eating. What they eat, and whether they eat at all, is one of the few decisions some of them are still able to make.”
The H4U model is characterized by the motto “Home is a feeling.” The path to that feeling of home lies in things like being able to have visitors stay overnight. Just as we do at home.
What has surprised me most so far? Staff across different professions smile at one another more, and they make an effort to ensure that they, too, feel at home here. Take Tim, a member of the cleaning staff, who leaves a piece of candy on office desks every evening. He speaks of the residents of “his” two households as family and teaches new colleagues to approach them in the same way. To brighten their day, he sometimes works in one of his inflatable costumes – apparently, the dinosaur has been the biggest hit 🙂.
Only two years have passed since the move from the old building, and everyone emphasizes that they are still working towards fully implementing the model. The greatest challenge seems to be a shift in the way staff think: moving away from the original “medical” approach towards respecting each person’s need to make decisions about their own life and have their loved ones close by. This also means accepting the risks that such an environment brings when people are living with dementia. Implementing H4U is also very costly.That is why I am looking forward to meeting the academics on the evaluation team. I am genuinely curious about their findings.
Greetings from Vancouver Island,
Věra Suchomelová
More photos on the Faculty of Theology’s Facebook page.
