Health-Promoting Housing and Care Concepts for Older People with Dementia?

Norwegian municipalities require increasing the number of care places. The main challenge for the municipalities is to obtain enough high-quality and suitable residential facilities. As buildings are often inflexible structures, they will impact their daily lives for decades. The question is whether the environment can support and promote health for the residents. These concepts have been planned over the last 10 years and built over the past three years. They were inspired by a similar concept in Hoegeweyk, the Netherlands, supported by a state-of-the-art report based on relevant research published in SINTEF 2015. This knowledge has been translated into three concepts (two nursing homes and one care housing) in three different communities in Norway. A case study has been conducted to examine the implementation of these new concepts. The primary questions posed include: Do these concepts operate as intended? What have been the experiences of the staff, residents, and relatives regarding the solutions? How was the process, from idea to construction, and how was the care concept implemented? We are exploring whether this provides health-promoting experiences. We conducted in-depth interviews to gather data and analyzed the buildings, care concepts and architectural plans. The physical solutions and service models in our study have shown to strongly influence each other, leading to promising outcomes. The fact that the residents can move around in a sheltered, nice outdoor area inspires them to walk and gives them a feeling of freedom and contact with nature. Smaller groups provide an experience of domesticity and strengthen person-centered care. Other citizens are invited to use the common spaces in the buildings, such as children from kindergarten, a dancing group, a quire, etc. Bringing the outside world in, increased mobility, daylight, and fresh air seems to support health. These positive outcomes underscore the potential of our health-promoting housing and care concepts for the elderly with dementia.