TTA Archives 2005-2012

The Hogeway care home near Amsterdam provides an environment for dementia sufferers which is quite unlike what we see in memory care units. It is an eight ‘house’ community built around a large enclosed courtyard where residents are free to walk and sit. Each house is structured like a large family home with eat-in kitchen and a lifestyle theme (e.g. urban) that influences the decor, food and experiences. ‘Alternate reality’ is what it is dubbed in the 1:26 video from BBC News, but what it does is give a resident understandable surroundings with appropriate stimulation and most importantly, socialization that seems to work within their limitations, for some happiness and improved quality of life. Editor Donna would have liked more observation of the residents, but appreciates that even the most discreet film crew would be profoundly disruptive of their everyday routine and potentially upsetting. It should give senior housing people in the US and UK at least a few ideas away from the isolation that tends to pervade many memory care wings. Dementia patients in Dutch village given ‘alternative reality’.