The program revolutionising dementia care in aged care facilities

Caring for someone living with dementia can be challenging, and finding the right sort of support and care for your relative or friend can be overwhelming.

With a variety of care options available, from in-home support through to specialist and secure dementia care aged care facilities, understanding the disease is crucial in finding the right type of care for your loved one. 

As anyone caring for people living with dementia would know, they are very susceptible to falls, have wandering tendencies and present with expressive behaviours, all of which can poses challenges for them when it comes to care.

Aged care facilities employ a variety of models of care for residents living with dementia and researching the right type of care for your loved one cannot be emphasized enough. 

The Salvation Army Aged Care Plus are six months into a twelve-month pilot of the renowned Butterfly Household Care Model which originated from Dementia Care Matters in England.

The internationally award-winning model of care, re-named Making Moments Matter, has been introduced at two of The Salvation Army Aged Care Plus Centres, The Cairns Aged Care Plus Centre at Chapel Hill in Queensland and Mountain View Aged Care Plus Centre in the ACT, with operators reporting promising early results.

Results include a 100% reduction in expressive behaviours and an 85% reduction in falls at one facility, as well as a 33% reduction in the number of residents who require psychotropic medication.

Executive Manager of Care Services for Aged Care Plus, Peter Bewert, said residents in the program were experiencing less falls and an improvement in healthy weight ratios since the model was implemented in July last year.

“The biggest factor is the quality of life,” he told Starts at 60.

“To see our resident absolutely come alive is an amazing thing to see, to see them interact with other residents and carers, and be truly happy is something to be proud of.”

So, what does the program involve?

Well, instead of the traditional clinical model of care, the Making Moments Matter model focuses on a more personal and emotional approach to dementia care.

Bewert said the program was based on emotional intelligence and treating people as individuals.

“Typically in a lot of training for dementia carers, people are taught emotional detachment,” he said.

“We’ve broken down all those barriers – we think it causes more risk and more harm, and we want an emotional connection between staff and residents.

“When you really start to know a person and relate to them on an emotional level, you start to understand their holistic needs.”

The social model works by focusing on “making moments matter”, looking at what matters most to the residents and capturing those moments with them.

“If we can teach people to become more emotionally intelligent and more emotionally aware, we can relate to residents in a feelings based model,” Bewert said.

“That’s quite revolutionary.

“At the end of the day as human beings we all experience feelings, if we understand it we can relate to it better.”

In addition to a no-uniform policy and intensive training in the UK for staff, the model’s implementation also sees changes made to the interior of the dementia unit to make it feel more home-like, and flexible routines that allow residents to participate in activities as they feel the need.

Residents also share their meal times with staff, and involve themselves in domestic duties to give themselves a sense of purpose and value.

According to some family members, the program is really working.

Amanda Jackson, whose mum, Sue Jackson, is a resident at one of the facilities, said she could see the new model was providing greater quality of life for her mum and the other residents.

“They are engaged and welcomed into a new home and I can see they are no longer bored or reserved,” she said.

Upon successful completion of the pilot program, The Salvation Army Aged Care Plus plan to roll the new model of care out across their other Centres in NSW, ACT and QLD.

“We knew the model in Australia needed to change,” Bewert said.

“This is the first time we’ve seen it in action and the results speak for themselves.

“It’s paving the way forward for the future of dementia care in Australia.”

In the next six months the program will be implemented further, with working laundries and kitchens set to be installed in the facilities so residents can carry out daily routine tasks as they like.

What do you think about the dementia program? Do you have a relative in dementia are?