Category: Innovative Models

Making Moments Matter at The Glebe Centre:   

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.

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.

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

And now on October 9^th, 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!

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.

The Toronto Star article “The Fix”, June 20^th, 2018, states “in Peel Region, a couple of bureaucrats decided to take a risk on a care model that promotes, well, love…shoving aside the old clinical ways with plans for laughter, friendship, energy, tenderness, freedom and hope”.  And guess what?  It’s working!  Residents, staff and families from one unit are living as a community resulting in a decrease of aggressive incidents, decrease in psychotropic drugs as well as a decrease in staff sick days.

Click here to view the 21 minute video that shows how this unit was transformed. You will be amazed!

Are other municipal politicians gutsy enough to champion real change?  Mayor Tory seems to be.  He wants ‘The Fix’ in other Toronto nursing homes.  Read more here.

It is a mystery why there has not been a revolution to challenge the problems that have plagued our Ontario Long-Term Care Home system for decades.  But we can all start now by forwarding this blog post to all the candidates who will be running in the October Municipal elections to plant the seeds now and to demand that other cities embrace innovation as Peel has done.

As Peel City Councillor Ron Starr said “A program like this should spread like wildfire”.

And please forward this post to your contacts and encourage them to “follow” our blog to build up support for a transformation in our long-term care home system.

Sharing the “stuff of life” at a Butterfly Care Home in the U.K

Do you know what the main difference is between Ontario’s institutional long-term care home model and the U.K.’s Butterfly Model just adopted by Malton Village Long-Term Care Home in Peel, Ontario?

Relationships, kindness and compassion 

Sound familiar?  That’s because the Butterfly Model is similar to the Hogewey and Eden Alternative models which were highlighted in previous blog posts.

• All of these 3 models allow time for staff to develop relationships with residents and families.  Our current medical model of care in Ontario does not.
• The Butterfly model stresses a departure from “a culture of care that believes the best facilities can do for dementia patients is provide physical safety and hold them in a building” to “a transformation in the way people are cared for, with a focus on people’s emotions and the creation of homelike environments and everyday activities people enjoyed earlier in life”

After the success of its one year pilot project, Malton Village Long-Term Care Centre in Peel has become the first Butterfly Care Home in Ontario.  Read more here.

Once the election is over, contact your MPPs again to urge them to consider these success stories.  All the MPP posts are listed as vacant until the election is over.

AND PLEASE – encourage 3 or more of your contacts to “follow” our blog.  Long-term care home residents need our help!