Category: Innovative Models

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Yet another Butterfly Model approved in London, Ontario!!!

Congratulations to Henley Place Home in London, Ontario for receiving its Butterfly Model of Care accreditation in December 2020. It joins Henley House in St. Catharines, Ontario which received it accreditation in December 2019.

When will other long-term care home providers rise to the challenge and begin to implement innovative models?

Kudos to Primacare Living Solutions, the provider of these homes for their leadership in implementing transformative culture change in their homes. And yes, more to come – Primacare has a third home (Burton Manor in Brampton, ON) currently undergoing Butterfly accreditation that should be completed in the fall 2021.

Please advocate for change by contacting your local councillor, your MPP, or organizations urging them to bring this change to your community.

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Long-term care reform: what seniors need and deserve

 

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St. John’s Green House home in Penfield N.Y: residents eat together at a communal table. The Green House project focuses on residents’ emotional and social well-being.

“…….The COVID-19 crisis has highlighted that we need new ways of providing LTC to protect residents from plagues of communicable disease. But we also need to eradicate the noncommunicable plagues of old age identified by the architects of the Eden Alternative — loneliness, helplessness, and boredom.

We need new models of care that prioritize human relationships, dignity, and safety. That means a moratorium on new LTC facilities that don’t look like Sherbrooke Community Centre’s Poppy Lane…..” (a long-term care home featured on this blog site on November 16, 2017)  says Dr. Michael Rachlis, a public health physician and an Adjunct Professor at the University of Toronto Dalla Lana School of Public Health that appeared in The Star on May 8th, 2020.  Read more here

 

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Another innovative model – now in Waterloo

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“Sunnyside Home is adopting a new approach to make the Kitchener long-term care facility feel more like a home, and staff like family, for its residents with “dementia.”………

Sunnyside has been working for a few years to improve care by moving away from a medical model. The butterfly approach will take that to the next level to ensure residents have a full life” as reported in an article by Johanna Weidner in The Waterloo Chronicle.

This is another example of the increasing number of innovative long-term care home models that are striving for the transformative culture care we are hoping for in the future for Ontario. Unfortunately, the COVID-19 virus crisis has obviously put a damper on this kind of major change from moving forward at this time. We look forward to encouraging these homes in their quest for culture change once this crisis is over.

 

 

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Butterfly Approach takes flight!

Butterfly Approach launch at Miramichi Lodge

Here is an update on the exciting journey that Bonnechere Manor and Miramichi Lodge have begun in the implementation of the Butterfly model.

The Butterfly approach was pioneered over 20 years ago in the United Kingdom by Dementia Care Matters and over the past year or so has been adopted or emulated in a few long-term care homes in Ontario. It is a social model of care that shifts care from a traditional medical care approach to:
• Prioritising emotional care that is person centered
• Creating busy, filled up, engaging places that feel like ‘home’
• Providing relaxed, freed up comfortable environments
• Involving people in the running of their own home
• Emphasizing a more informal, best friends and family like approach.

Miramichi will start by focusing on a unit of 27 people and at Bonnechere Manor, a unit of 20 people. Eventually the Butterfly approach will be used throughout both homes.

“Long-term care homes are not a place where people go to stay; they are places where people go to live and that at the heart of long-term care must be family, friends, and community”.  Read more here.

Kudos to Renfrew County! Let’s hope that more long-term care homes will see the benefits of adopting an innovative approach to care.

Please forward this to others who may be interested and if you are on social media, share on your Facebook, Instagram or Twitter accounts.

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Meaningful Care Matters: Free To Be Me

Making Moments Matter at The Glebe Centre:    20GlebephotoJan7blogpost

No More Beige! 

An update from the Glebe Centre (Ottawa) :  Although the team from Meaningful Care Matters (formerly Dementia Care Matters) observed many exceptional moments of care, there were indeed areas that needed improvement and did not follow a person-centered model of care.

This will be our journey over the next year, to transform and re-think care on Bankwood (one of the care units at the Center) from a neutral/task based model of care to a person-centered, house-hold model of care.

Meaningful Care Matters has sent an extensive, formal report with recommendations on making meaningful change.

An audit was completed on the physical space on Bankwood and recommendations for change and transformation.  Over the last few months we have started to create a relaxed home-like feel to the day with less task orientated activities and more emphasis on the people living and working on Bankwood.

We have begun the process to re-design Bankwood to be more welcoming and intimate, filling the house with the “stuff of life” so that residents can connect with a variety of colours and objects that reflect their past lives, work and hobbies.  And staff training begins this month!

Person-centered care is front and foremost as Bankwood undergoes change and transformation!  Please forward this blog post to at least one other contact you know who may be interested.

And please encourage others to become followers by clicking on the button on the right hand side of this post.

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The Village Langley: Four Months Old and Growing!

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Instead of building homes in which people feel homeless, let’s build communities where people belong”. Sonya Barsness.

In June, 2019, Canada’s first Dementia Village opened. The Village’s design was inspired by Hogewey, the world’s first dementia village, in The Netherlands. Langley will become home to 78 people with dementia housed in six cottages. Care will be provided by 72 specially trained staff.

After 4 months, Langley has admitted 38 residents, one couple, and more residents are being added from its wait list every week.

  • Two cottages are full and two more are at 50% capacity.
  • The General Store is stocked and open for shoppers (pet food is popular).
  • Elroy’s Cafe & Bistro is open for baking, lunch, coffee or a cold beer.
  • The kitchen is the centre of activity and the smells permeate the house and stimulate the senses and appetite of the residents. Residents are involved in the daily food prep, plating and cleanup to the best of their abilities.
  • Residents have created their own Newspaper complete with real and imagined stories and clippings contributed by each household member.
  • Music is also important to the residents playing instruments when able to express their own particular interests.

The Village is about doing things differently. It is about putting the interests and needs of the residents first and making each house a home.

Although the Village Langley in British Columbia is privately owned and will not be affordable to all, we hope that this kind of innovation will influence others to bring culture change to their own long-term care homes.

Please forward this link to your friends, colleagues and your local city councillors, MPs or MPPs.

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Renfrew County follows the lead from Peel’s Malton Village

Two years after we featured several blog posts on the Butterfly home initiative at Malton Village in the Peel Region, there are now some very exciting results:

  • A 75% decrease in staff sick time resulting in continuity of care and huge cost savings;
  • a decrease from 39%-10% of residents exhibiting symptoms of depression;
  • a decrease in antipsychotic use by those without a diagnosis of psychosis 40% (‘17) to 8% (‘19);
  • anticipation that the implementation will end up being cost neutral after 3 years.

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Merrilee Fullerton, Minister of Long-term Care, meets with resident in Renfrew County.

And now on October 9th, 2019, both Bonnechere Manor and Miramichi Lodge Long-term Care Homes in Renfrew County began a journey to turn a dementia unit into a Butterfly Home.  “The transition will include significant environmental changes such as smaller more home-like ‘neighbourhoods’ versus units. This would mean for example converting a dementia unit where currently 20 residents reside into two (2) smaller neighbourhoods of 10.  Other environmental changes will include redesigning the dementia units to be more welcoming and intimate, and filling the household with the ‘stuff of life’ so that residents can connect with a variety of colours, textures and objects that reflect their past lives, work and hobbies.”  For full media release, click here.

Way to go Renfrew County for being another champion for culture change!

Contact your MPPs and City Councilors to let them know about these new developments and that we need to invest in more innovation in our long-term care homes.  Let’s keep the momentum going!

 

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The Glebe Centre – finally a champion for Ottawa!

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The Glebe Centre, a non-profit, charitable long-term care home, has partnered with Dementia Care Matters to become the first Butterfly Home in Ottawa. The Butterfly Model is a transformative model of care for long-term care homes that means:

  • Total culture change
  • More than addressing the clinical needs of the residents
  • A place where residents, families and staff form a community of care,
  • Relationships matter most and
  • Where residents’ preferences for daily activities are respected

“You never change things by fighting the existing reality.  To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete”.  R. Buckminster Fuller

The Glebe Centre has done just that and seized the opportunity to be the leader for transformative change for our long-term care homes in Ottawa. They will start with one unit in the fall of 2019.  This is a bold and risky step and we offer our hearty congratulations!

Now to get other cities like Brantford, Kingston, Belleville to follow suit.

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Dementia villages!

19HogeweyVillageBCrenditionJunepost

The Hogewey Village concept, developed in the Netherlands in the 1990’s, was featured in this blog’s first post (September 22, 2017) describing its implementation at Georgian Bay Retirement Home in Ontario; it has also been implemented in Alberta, and is soon to become a reality as a long-term care home in Langley, B.C.

As reported in The Northern View article on June 20, 2019,  the Langley  complex includes squares, gardens and a park where the residents can safely roam, along with a grocery store, restaurant, bar and theatre streets.

“What we want is to create a space where people can live life to the best of their ability in their own way, ”  For the full article, click here.

Even though the Langley project is private and costly,  it is a model from which both public and private sectors can build on to improve long-term care homes in Canada.  For instance Providence Health Care, a non-profit organization, is now in the process of creating similar purpose-built facilities in Vancouver and Comox.

While change is happening, it is very sporadic in a  system devoid of a strategic plan to overhaul the long-term care home system.

We need a strong advocacy voice to pressure governments at all levels to ‘step up to the plate’ and begin a health revolution in bringing about total culture change in the long-term care home system in Canada.  Please reach out to friends, families, organizations, politicians, and the list goes on to lobby and advocate to make this long overdue change a reality.

 

 

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He Broke the Law to Build a Better Nursing Home

Is growing older a good thing? Or is the idea of aging something to be feared leading to isolation, loneliness and a lack of autonomy?

In 1991, Dr. Bill Thomas became the medical director of a nursing home in upstate New York. He found the place, as the Washington Post put it, “depressing, and a repository for old people whose minds and bodies seemed dull and dispirited.”  Read article here.

So, what did Thomas do? He decided to transform the nursing home. Based on a hunch, he persuaded his staff to stock the facility with two dogs, four cats, several hens and rabbits, and 100 parakeets, along with hundreds of plants, a vegetable and flower garden, and a day-care site for staffers’ kids.

All those animals in a nursing home broke state law, but for Thomas and his staff, it was a revelation. Caring for the plants and animals restored residents’ spirits and autonomy; many started dressing themselves, leaving their rooms and eating again. The number of prescriptions fell to half of that of a control nursing home, particularly for drugs that treat agitation. Medication costs plummeted, and so did the death rate. “He named the approach the Eden Alternative.”

What do you think? Do our beliefs about aging affect our expectations about quality of life? Are our expectations about aging one of the reasons it is so difficult to implement innovative models within long term care homes? Please share your comments.

If you are on Facebook, Twitter or Linkedin, please share with your followers or pass along to your contacts.

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Canada’s first Dementia Village!

Dec 2018

Canada’s first community designed, specifically for people with dementia opens in June 2019 Langley B.C.

It’s called The Village. Comprised of six, single-story cottage-style homes and a community centre, The Village will be home to 78 people with dementia, an umbrella term that includes people suffering from Alzheimer’s and other degenerative brain diseases associated with aging. Care will be provided by 72 specially trained staff.

At The Village, residents are not seen as dementia patients; they see the person and their story first. They believe that every person’s fundamental desire to achieve well-being, purpose and fulfillment does not diminish with age or dementia.

The Village’s design was inspired by Hogewey, the world’s first dementia village, in The Netherlands. What makes The Village different from traditional nursing homes is that residents will be able to shop, have a coffee, walk their dog, get their hair cut and take part in activities such as gardening by themselves. Continue reading “Canada’s first Dementia Village!”

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6th Graders in a Long-Term Care Home?

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What is unusual about this picture?

Sherbrooke Community Centre Nursing Home in Saskatoon is the home to 263 high-needs residents. It’s also the site of an intergenerational school. Every year, after winning a city-wide lottery, a batch of sixth graders ditch the traditional classroom and spend a year attending school at Sherbrooke.  Listen to this story from CBC’s Sunday Morning radio show here.

At Sherbrooke, there are no classrooms, no desks, and no blackboards. Students get together with their teachers in the chapel in the morning and again at noon, but the rest of the time they are free to go where they want, and sit with anyone they feel like talking to.  The school is a life-changing experience for the elders as much as it is for the kids.

“If we didn’t see the kids, we would just be a bunch of old people in this building, and that is stark and it’s ugly. Without the kids, I just feel that a part of me dies,” one resident says.

In western Canada, Sherbrooke Community Centre Nursing Home is the first care home to register as an Eden Alternative ® home.

Another innovative model for us to consider….

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