New opening
The term ‘household’ reveals much about the home. From the project’s beginnings, Norden House was intended as a ‘homely’ rather than ‘luxury’ proposition, and Annie is keen to draw a distinction between Norden House and other homes. “The idea is that we’re not a care home that has a cinema or fine dining or whatever,” she explains. “The concept is that [Norden House] looks ‘home from home’. So, if somebody’s coming from their own home, rather than confuse them, we wanted to make it feel like their own home here.”
Dignity is key
The eight households are grouped around The Street – a row of ‘shops’ (the coffee shop, a hairdressers) and other amenities arranged along a central corridor. Annie tells me: “The idea is, if you’ve got somebody with dementia, who can’t go into the community because of their behaviours, or somebody who doesn’t have dementia but because of their mobility [cannot walk through an actual town centre] you can, in
effect, come out of your front door and come into The Street, get a proper latté, sit and have a chat, and then go and get your hair done. It’s like going out.” As well as these facilities, Norden House also offers holistic therapies such as Reiki healing, reflexology, and sound therapy, at an additional cost. Fees at Norden House begin at around £1,600 for residential care, rising to just over £1,800 for low dependency nursing care, and around £2,000 for high dependency nursing care. While the home and its décor and fittings are dementia friendly, Annie and her team have worked hard to insure that this never comes at the expense of residents’ dignity, avoiding as best they can anything that might be stigmatising, or seem clinical or institutionalised. For Annie, this is very important. “We’re very dementia friendly without
people necessarily knowing,” she says. “So, if you don’t know what to look for, it just looks ‘normal’.” By way of example, Annie highlights the
fact that all the toilet seats in Norden House are grey rather than the standard ‘dementia blue’ used in many other homes. “So you can still see them, but it doesn’t [shout] ‘Oh, that’s for somebody with dementia’” she explains.
Additionally, staff at Norden House do
not wear uniforms, as research has shown that if people living with dementia see somebody in uniform, they think ‘nurse’ or ‘doctor’, which again would undermine the home’s efforts to create a homely, non- institutionalised atmosphere. “Staff just have their Christian name
[on display],” says Annie. “So they become companions.”
Resident-led care The desire to avoid that institutional feel extends to the signage. It is there, of course, but Annie’s approach is a subtle one, as she explains in relation to the dining areas: “Opposite each dining room there are lovely pictures of a plate, a knife and fork … so it signposts people to where they are, but without it being obvious. It’s very gentle, but it’s there,” she tells me.
Dignity in dining and drinking should
be a key consideration for residents living with dementia, and Norden House employs a considerate, compassionate approach, right down to the choice of crockery and drinkware.
“The crockery we use has an orange
edge, because a lot of people with dementia can’t work out where the edge of the plate is,” Annie says. “You can get what they call ‘dementia crockery’ but it’s not very dignified. These are normal plates that you would buy for your own home, but it serves for people with dementia.
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www.thecarehomeenvironment.com June 2024
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