Outdoor spaces
Getting outdoors: the key to boosting residents’ wellbeing
Getting outdoors in communal gardens, or within the wider community, can have a real impact on the health and wellbeing of people living in care homes. Cheryl Baird, group director of quality and care at Orchard Care Homes, offers some tips for utilising your home’s outdoor spaces
Whether you are gardening or walking, it is well known that being outside can greatly reduce stress and blood pressure. At Orchard Care Homes, we are proud of our community gardens and outdoor spaces. Recently, we have invested a lot of time and energy into getting our gardens ‘In Bloom’ for a group-wide competition among our 23 care homes in the North of England and Midlands. We feel it is important that our gardens are accessible areas for all, well- utilised, and adapted for year-round use.
Gardens and dementia Orchard Care Homes launched its Dementia Promise to its residents and their families in early 2023 and is striving to offer the very best in dementia care, training, and expertise. We go beyond the day-to-day routines and offer specialised care that is specifically adapted to each person’s needs. One aspect of dementia care support that we consider to be vitally important is offering an opportunity for people to be meaningfully occupied. This means providing a focused, person-led approach to our care and supporting everyone with their chosen activities or hobbies. Our colleagues are on hand to supervise activities that can be done either independently, or with support from our carers. We have found that gardening offers a great deal of reward, engagement, and sensory stimulation, and is often a go-to activity for many of the people in our homes. For this reason, each of our homes has a community garden, adapted to the needs of the people living there. Dementia is a degenerative illness which
can have a huge impact on the senses. A decline in our senses through sensory processing difficulties can bring about confusion and greatly reduce someone’s ability to be able to connect to their environment.
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Being outdoors can give our senses a huge boost. For people living with dementia, especially those within our Reconnect Communities, it is vital that we do as much as we can to stimulate their senses regularly. As we get older, our senses can become
weakened. Our eyesight and hearing may decline. For people living with dementia, all five senses can be affected. For example, sense of smell may reduce. In addition, we might see our sense of touch becoming desensitised, meaning it is harder to feel pain or changes in heat.
Gardening and being outside help to awaken some of these senses. We often
Each of our homes has a community garden, adapted to the needs of the people living there
talk about the ‘joy of nature’, and this can be seen as a bit of a cliché. However, to someone living with dementia, being outside can be extremely therapeutic. Awakening senses through touching the earth, smelling flowers, or hearing bird songs can help to unlock memories and promote re-connection with the world around them.
Pride and self-esteem
Being at one with nature can give a person a sense of accomplishment, too. Occupying our residents with practical activities can give them joy and a sense of achievement. From simple planting, light weeding, or even sweeping up leaves, a feeling of purpose does so much for our self-esteem and mood-elevation. Confidence grows, too, if the person sees an activity through from start to finish. In life, we all like to feel useful and productive, so if a person contributes to the upkeep or visual presentation of
www.thecarehomeenvironment.com October 2024
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