Inequality care or luxurious workhouse: high end care and support

 Another of my series of local older people's care facilities. This time we're at the very luxy end of the market - this place is renowned as the posh place to go. And you see they have a 'special neighbourhood' for the memory impaired - you can either see this as tactful or twee. And should we really encourage a public perception that dementia that requires care is really about being 'memory impaired'?
  

The main entrance is hotel like - although a lot of it seems to be flatlets. I've not been in, but one imagines smart communal accommodation, and as you can see the selling schtick encourages a hotel lounge sort of approach.

But the place is gigantic - there are several wings; or perhaps I should say 'neighbourhoods'. In fact it's workhouse-sized; and quite a large workhouse at that, although in this case, I imagine the taxpayers are not making any sort of contribution. This is really social inequality red in tooth and claw.






Another workhouse feature is that it's on the edge of town, so, as in the workhouse era, people are excluded from general view, and residents have little chance to go to shops, nice and Surrey-like though they are, under their own steam, unless they can still drive.






However, luxurious, then, is this the, possibly isolating, kind of living most older people really want, when research suggests that it's family networks that are most important to them?

Equipment if you need help with a little decrepitude

You see here a perching stool in our kitchen - this is a new acquisition; it makes life easier around the kitchen, indeed anywhere you need to stand when you have a bad back. Searching the the catalogue from OT Stores in Malvern (we were given it by an occupational therapist friend), we see an amazing number of things you can get for easing any number of practical difficulties as you get less able to do stuff. It's encouraging that there are so many possibilities, and perhaps discouraging that we know so little about it.

This is very solidly built, adjustable, cleanable but (question) does it have to be so institutional in style? Or is the definition of institutional something useful?

Has your room got its own mood? The latest silly decorating trend?

The National Trust magazine tells me (in passing in an article about planning your garden) that I need a mood board for each room in my house - I suppose I'm supposed to think what mood I'd like to be in in each room and adapt accordingly. I learned when we had a new lighting system in the church that it was adjusted according to moods in the services and in each area of the church; it brightens up when the service starts, for example, and when the choir's singing we get brighter lights.

Presumably I'm supposed to think about lighting schemes for my house, according to mood. When I'm depressed, the lights are lowered and black dogs reflected on the ceiling. Or do I just have to have the news projected on the wall? Do my happy family pics revolve like the portraits in the Murgatroyd Mansion (you have to have a background in Gilbert and Sullivan to know what this means), replacing cheerful snaps of weddings with family funerals?

Bur mainly I'm depressed that such a nonsense is being foisted on us as an innovation. I don't want my house to reflect my mood, and I don't want to move from room to room according to the mood I'm feeling. I suppose I might want the mood to be upbeat to keep me cheerful. And do people visiting stop looking at the decoration and the gadgets and instead do psychological assessments of the mood?

I'll consider a mood blog. Or it occurs to me perhaps I already have one - my more or less daily self-positioning blog probably has different photos and questions according to my mood. Look and see if you can assess it...http://self-positioning.tumblr.com/. But don't look at my less frequent end-of-life care blog, probably most people find that project depressing... http://sweol.wordpress.com/.

Inspiring story of living with dementia - Arnold Peters obituary

The Guardian today has an obituary of Arnold Peters, the actor who has been playing a character in The Archers, the long-running radio serial, which I've been listening to on and off since childhood. The character, Jack Woolley, has had dementia for some years. So, apparently did Peters, who recorded his part in his care home from 2008 to 2011, thanks to the BBC - good on them. An inspiring story about how you can live a good life with dementia, and also how, like the BBC, we should all be trying to help people live creative lives with dementia.

Link to the Guardian obit of Arnold Peters.

The permanency of paper against the temporality of a blog

I suppose I should say something about when you get a gap in my blogs as in the last few weeks. It's sometimes when I'm away: people know where I live and can burgle the house if I tell them in advance. Do burglars read blogs? But most often, as in the case of the end of April, it's when deadlines or publisher's pressures get heavy and I have to write academic papers and edit books and so on instead of write blogs.

Should that have priority over my blogs? Probably more people read my blog than read my books, and certainly more people see them than read academic papers. But then if they do, they probably forget it instantly, and there's something more satisfying about holding something made of paper in your hand, although people probably forget those instantly, too. But that's probably an old-fashioned view, and won't survive my generation.

Although I suppose paper's not that permanent, so the distinction is probably senseless...