Wanting to feel at home and safe where you live doesn’t change with age. It certainly doesn’t change if you move into residential aged care. Experts are clear, feeling at home is critical to the wellbeing of all who make the move.
One of the most important opportunities and hopes when helping loved-ones transition into aged care is supporting that new space to be personal, safe and comforting. But an idea is only worth its ability to be real.
For many seniors and their family members, knowing where to start, what questions to ask and how to work alongside providers can be a challenge when trying to make residential care feel like home.
Dementia Training Australia, in collaboration with the Department of Health, Disability and Ageing, have created a free national eight-part series designed to support everyone to do just that.
Real experience
Those behind the Home Matters: Environments webinar at the Department and Dementia Training Australia (DTA) get it. The team that created the webinar series didn’t do it from a distance but from lived experience.
Bringing together experts with decades of experience was important, as well as industry leaders, but just as vital was to hear from and build the series around seniors who are in aged care and what actually made a difference for them.
The environment you live in directly impacts health, wellbeing, behaviour and quality of life, getting it right for seniors in residential aged care is a non-negotiable. Through the free webinars the team looks to provide practical and evidence-based insights into how environments can have a powerful beneficial impact to safeguard independence, identity, dignity and connection.
These words can’t be lip-service to the thousands of seniors and those that cherish them. The webinar is about practical and possible tips to creating home-like spaces in residential aged care.
Common goal
The webinar is for anyone connected to aged care, people who believe in supporting the best possible care for seniors. What Home Matters seeks to do is bring together the village to hear, listen and act.
The webinar is designed by and for all those that are involved in showing up to do the purpose-filled work of aged care. From aged care front-line staff, aged care executives, designers, architects, seniors, loved-ones and carers, Home Matters is to share the realities of lived experience, expert knowledge and practical strategies that can be applied immediately, regardless of role or setting.
Everyone has a seat at the table to not only learn but to share the realities of what aged care has been and how changes are possible from every role and vantage point.
Realistic
The webinar has been created to be effective in the here and now, with the resources and opportunities on site. Creating a safe place for seniors should not be out of reach due to enormous costs for seniors, loved-ones or staff.
What experts and seniors, who’ve contributed to the webinar, are keen to showcase is that good design is not locked away in luxury or large-scale redevelopment. Core to the series are thoughtful and informed choices that can make aged care homes safer, more comfortable and importantly supportive places to live and work.
Home Matters is about empowering families, staff and providers to understand the nuances and evidence of environment design, to know what quality environments are and to be encouraged to advocate for spaces that are personal and feel like home.
Compliance and care
The webinar team collaborated to bring the theory of the National Aged Care Design Principles and Guidelines into the practical everyday through this webinar series. Theory is only as good as it can be real in daily-life, and that is core to the way Home Matters has been created.
Topics within the series get to the practical point, creating home-like spaces in a way that is possible for seniors, family members and front-line staff. Providing ideas and ways to see them through to improve access to outdoor areas is covered, alongside designing culturally safe environments for people of all backgrounds and approaching these changes in a way that doesn’t overwhelm seniors and staff within existing buildings and workflows. Change must be possible so that all who live and work within facilities can feel supported and honoured.
Honouring the need for change
The webinar and its creators affirm that within this time of reform of aged care, there have been a lot of challenges for seniors, staff and the sector. Even within this change however, physical environments will always play an important role in the quality and safety of human-beings in aged care. The webinar and its lessons don’t side-step the difficulties that many seniors and staff are facing. In some cases, residential aged care settings were not designed to support environments that feel both personal and safe; the topics offer solutions within this reality.
The Home Matters series directly steps into the space of where change is needed, bringing an understanding of the National Aged Care Design Principles and Guidelines and placing it squarely into practical steps. Participants are encouraged to expect to hear from subject matter experts, industry professionals and people with lived experience, to leave with practical ways to make change that can be done without delay or red tape, whether in new builds or existing homes.
Making quality design in residential aged care environments happen is not arbitrary to the experts, seniors and leaders who have contributed to the webinar. It is believed and championed. Wanting to support through knowledge, they have crafted the webinar to support design that makes a difference in people’s lives; Independence is a result, reduced distress, heightened connections and aiding people to hold on to who they are and knowing they belong. This is real, acknowledged and honoured.
For all
The webinar is for all those that care to make aged care a place that cherishes the people at its heart. For seniors going into aged care, for the loved-ones that want their best, for the front-life that are committed to making aged care safe and joyful, the webinar wants all to feel welcome.
The topics and functioning of the webinar work through practical possibility, unlike so many design-focused initiatives that are too lofty to make happen. The Home Matters team wanted to ground the topics, lessons and QnA in lived experience, the reality of the workforce and the sector, and to teach changes in progressive steps.
Far from out-of-reach ideals or high-cost solves, the webinar is about balancing policy, evidence and day-to-day practice towards making a change for the seniors and staff who are human, invaluable and deserve to thrive where they live and work.
Registering
All sessions are free to attend. If any sessions are missed, each one will be recorded and available on the Environments Hub on the Dementia Training Australia website.
