In this episode of Grey Matters, Tracey and Ben discuss the benefits of aged care community living.
Community living has some distinct differences and benefits compared to living in your own home or a residential aged care facility.
Tracey explains how aged care community living is like a village within a village and how the Seasons model aims to support people to live the age they are inside… whatever age that may be!
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Ben Davis:
Good day again, in this episode of Grey Matters, the benefits of community living. Ben Davis with you. Alongside me in the studio is Tracey Silvester from Seasons Aged Care. Tracy, let’s go straight off the bat here. Community living as opposed to retirement village living. Two very different things.
Tracey Silvester:
Yes. When we’re talking about community living, Ben, we’re not talking about community living in terms of staying in your own home because that’s what some people might think it is. We’re not talking about retirement villages. Retirement villages are really for a group of people who want to downsize as they get older, and they don’t want to have the big backyard, and the 42,000 steps up at the front and down the back, and they also want some lifestyle with that.
When we talk about community living, and that’s something … it’s a term that was really coined within Seasons to describe what we do there. It’s really to talk about the benefits of living in a community as you age. The idea is, we’ve created a village within a village. Within our Seasons environment, the difference I guess is that, we’ve created a community that’s got a very strong focus on people being looked after either by their family members, or their partners, or their spouses, or the on-site care staff that we have within Seasons.
The benefit particularly for couples as they age, the thing that they hate the thought of the most is that they might be separated because one of them needs to go into a nursing home.
Ben Davis:
And that doesn’t happen here?
Tracey Silvester:
We actually pride ourselves on being able to look after couples as they age. The person who doesn’t need care can actually get their life back and the person who does need care can receive the care but they’re still together.
Ben Davis:
It can be so scary. You’ve just peeled that all back. Now, there is also assisted care on-site.
Tracey Silvester:
We have our 24-hour, 7 day a week care provider. We pride ourselves on being a support to the family, whatever that looks like. Mum or Dad, or both need care, how much care do they need, what bits are you going to do, and what bits will we do? It’s quite seamless.
Ben Davis:
That level of care can increase-
Tracey Silvester:
Yes.
Ben Davis:
… or decrease as needed?
Tracey Silvester:
That’s right. We are not unknown to be having care staff working from somebody’s house if they’re very unwell or if they actively receiving palliative care. Or we might visit someone once a week to do their cleaning.
Ben Davis:
Tracey, someone just coming in to do the cleaning once a week, I mean, that’s a level of care.
Tracey Silvester:
Absolutely. In fact, there’s a lot of research Ben, that says that for people who are ageing and starting to need services, that cleaning services is probably the most important service that they will ever get because functionally, in terms of people ability to do stuff, that’s something that they lose as they get older, is the ability to mop the floor, or to clean the toilet, or whatever.
The other thing that that means is that there’s somebody going in to actually see how that person’s going and can pick up on some of those really subtle declines in somebody’s health. It really does depends on what they need and what they want. Choice is really, really important to us and we’re on a bit of a mission within Seasons to support people to live the age they are inside.
Ben Davis:
Positively ageing.
Tracey Silvester:
Yes. We’ve all got an age we are inside. I’m 29. Yeah, you laugh. Yeah, right. I know.
Ben Davis:
I would have thought 25.
Tracey Silvester:
Yeah, thanks. But if you actually thought about it, there’s an age that you are, that you still think back and you go, “Yeah. I’m still that age.” If you talk to older people, and I’ve done a fair bit of talking to older people over the last 12 months, they’ve all got an age they are inside. They get really cranky when you start talking to them about being an old person. We try within Seasons, actually keep people thinking about themselves as that 25-year-old.
Ben Davis:
Tracey, so many benefits of community living. Thank you for peeling back the scariness for anyone who is entering into this. Remember, Grey Matters.
