Dementia care
Creating a homely and empowering environment
Millennium Care was recently selected to participate in a parliamentary review publication as a best practice representative for its Worthington Lake care home development. Neda Ehtemam discusses some of its special and unique features
Research has shown that a poorly designed environment can have a profound effect on the health of people with dementia and has been found to lead to increased fall rates, lower sleep quality and higher stress levels. It is also understood that 70-90 per cent of people who live in care homes have dementia. Therefore, it is important to consider the benefits of designing an environment well for people who live with the condition. A well designed environment can help reduce falls by up to 60 per cent and leads to a greater degree of independence, for example, at
mealtimes. An environment that supports and empowers a person who has dementia can also reduce the need for antipsychotic medication. Considering the design of the environment not only benefits the individual from a physical and medical perspective, but also has psychosocial benefits. For example, a poorly designed environment is likely to prevent someone with dementia from being able to carry out tasks independently, which means they will require increased intervention from staff. This in turn has been found to negatively affect confidence and self-
esteem and have social implications. However, an environment that has been designed to enable people with dementia to carry out personal tasks independently increases self-esteem, which encourages relationships and social interaction.
Key features
Worthington Lake care home has been under construction since July 2017 and opened in the autumn of 2018. Based in Standish, Wigan, the 32-bed home provides dementia care that is truly bespoke with a layout and design guided by some of the key research in dementia design. The aim is to create a home that is empowering and supportive, enabling residents to live as independently as possible in a non-institutional setting. The focus of the development has been to address key design principles based on researched findings to create an empowering home. The design of the interior of the development took into account both sensory and memory impairments associated with dementia as well as lighting and way finding strategies. The interior of the home was given great consideration from an early stage of the process. The brief was to create an environment that was homely and non- institutional while adhering to key dementia design principles that aim to empower residents.
Visual impairments are common in older age, particularly in those with dementia. A natural thickening of the eye lenses causes problems recognising colour and contrast
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Visual impairments are common in older age, particularly in those with dementia. A natural thickening of the eye lenses causes problems recognising colour and contrast. Dementia presents further challenges to the ageing eye, as the brain may not always be able to process the information that the eye is seeing. Research suggests that in order for someone with dementia to optimally view contrast, there should be a difference of at least 30 per cent in light reflectance value (LRV) between key features and areas. For example, it is
www.thecarehomeenvironment.com • January 2019
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