The Dutch long-term care neighbourhood of de Hogeweyk has become a beacon for how seniors can live their final years, regardless of physical or psychological challenges.
Here, seniors continue to live their lives just as they would in their own homes. They eat and prepare food together as a “family,” and shop, stroll, attend concerts and generally live life to the fullest.
But long-term care in the Netherlands wasn’t always so innovative. It wasn’t until the 1990s when Eloy van Hal and Jannette Spiering began trialing some novel approaches in the Dutch long-term care system that was previously medically oriented.
“We disrupted the existing model, and we started to work with residents in a different way,” said van Hal, calling it the “re-humanization” of care. “We saw an immediate improvement in people’s behaviours.”
Both van Hal and Spiering were in Vancouver on October 28 to lead a workshop for Providence Health Care (PHC) and Providence Living long-term care staff who are adapting the de Hogeweyk approach in their model of care re-design project called Home for Us.
Read the full story in The Home Hub – Issue 4.pdf.
