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...

Skill-building for older people, so that they can take control

An experienced social worker in the US (you may be confused that it's about Rochdale, but it's a Rochdale in New York somewhere) talks about how he became interested in working with older people. This is important because a lot of social workers (who of course train when they're young) are mainly interested in working with children and young people. Older people, as a result don't get their fair share of the good social workers - although he makes the point that you have to earn trust, it doesn't come with a degree.  He emphasises supporting and not competing with older people's community organisations and recognising the issues that are important to them - crime in this instance even though most professionals think concern is over exaggerated. Nevertheless, it's a real concern for many older people, and it's important to take it seriously. It's also good to help people feel they can do something about what's happening to them, so they gave observational skills training to the older people, so they could be good witnesses when crime affected them.

A positive skill-building approach to working with older people, which recognises they can take control and can build their own contributions to the community; they don't have to have things done to them.

Link to the article.

Granny pods - keep older people in garden sheds

I'm intrigued by the American Association of Retired People promoting the idea of granny pods in your back garden. Yes, it allows older people to 'age in place' as the American jargon has it, but however luxurious this means keeping your older relative in a garden shed. Even more than with a 'granny annexe' it makes them very clearly subsidiary to the life of their younger relatives.

Domestic or institutional care homes - pokey vs non-human?

One of my occasional pictures of facilities for older people. This is one of our local residential care homes. Note the emphasis on family management - a claim for more personal care than a big chain. That is supported by using an extended detached family home. But very often the conversion and extensions required lead to a maze of fire precautions and corridors, whereas bigger buildings are less atmospheric. made more so because there is likely not to be family management. Does this provide choice in the market?

The domestic (and pokey) or the institutional (and nonhuman) - which should we prefer, for what purposes? And can the domestic be non-pokey and the institutional human?

Prevention: free older people's opportunities

You might be interested to see a 'less than 10 minutes' SCIE 'Social Care TV' film about various projects for promoting well-being for older people. There is also some talking-head stuff from Julien Forder at the Personal Social Services Research Unit about what constitutes prevention.

My comment is: we need to think carefully about prevention, because government tends to think of it as being about preventing them coming in for extra expenditure. But what it should be about is helping people attain the right lifestyle according to their own wishes. Is having lots of older people's clubs the right approach? It all looks a bit institutional here. It might be all right for some, but not for all. For some people, promoting involvement in the local pub may be more right. We're still thinking about organising things for people, rather than making it possible to free older people's opportunities.

Link to SCIE 'Social Care TV page on promoting well-being for older people