Design For Dementia
As Havelock Place, takes shape we’re always looking to provide the very best environment for those living with dementia. EveryDay Care & Support and Age UK North Tyneside have been involved in the design of this specialist housing development from it’s conception.
Site Image Havelock Place 6.11.2020
Aspirational Living
People living with dementia need well designed, beautiful buildings. We all expect this for ourselves and from our living accommodation. They also need buildings that are suitable which do not cause them unnecessary upset or confusion.
Understand dementia
To understand and achieve this we need to appreciate the impairments of dementia. As weel as how we can compensate for them as we would do for someone with mobility issues in a wheelchair for instance.
We need to acknowledge that everyone living with dementia is different in every possible way: different age, different degrees of impairment, different backgrounds and life experience, different physical and sensory impairments, different attitudes, different tastes and so on.
Adapted Environments
People living with dementia have very specific needs. Their environments have to be adapted to fulfil those needs and aspirations. Whether designing homes, gardens or outdoor spaces for people living with dementia, there are certain rules that we consider.
Create spaces for integration
It is healthy for people living with dementia to be integrated into their environment and relate to others. We encourage socialisation by designing spaces to invite people to interact and share time together.
Make customers and residents feel at home
Keeping a decorative style which people living with dementia are used to is going to help them. Their apartments or dwelling’s furniture and decoration must be comfortable for the customer.
Encourage and stimulate brain activity
Colours and objects are beneficial to stimulate the brain of a person living with dementia. It helps them as a guide to know where they are or where to go, and as a reference to identify what things are or what they mean. Stimulating their brain will help decrease their dementia symptoms and anxieties and slow down the degenerative process. Environments have to be calm and easy to digest to make them feel stable and relaxed.
Create open spaces
It is important, both for the person with the diagnosis and their carer, to be able to see each other from anywhere in their room. In order to feel comfortable, residents have to be able to process the whole environment that surrounds them.
Large rooms with big windows connected to open hallways are going to give them visual access to important objects and spaces. For caregivers, it is essential always to know where their loved one is and to be positioned comfortably to keep an eye on them.
Create places for distraction
Whether indoors or outdoors, it is important that people living with dementia have a safe and unique space to distract themselves. A place where they can do simple activities like gardening, listening to music, sewing or knitting, or anything that they enjoy doing, but that they can identify and relate this particular places to a certain activity.
Havelock Place
EveryDay Homes’ new specialist dementia housing development is due to open in 2022. We can’t wait to be part of this beautiful and unique property.
EveryDay Care & Support will be providing the professional care service within it to meet the needs of those in North Tyneside who are living with dementia.