HHHS is looking into ways to provide specialist care for people with diseases such as dementia. CEO Veronica Nelson, board chair Irene Odell, and chief nursing executive, Jennifer Burns-West, are visiting the Netherlands in April to tour several green care farm operations. They’ll be joined by board member Sharon Kaasalainen, a professor at McMaster University, who has spent years studying the unique approach.
An alternative living arrangement for people with dementia, the facilities typically have fewer residents – between six and eight – who live together in a homelike environment. Support staff are responsible for organizing daily activities, and personal and medical care.
Nelson said HHHS is looking at how to incorporate the approach, and others, into the new facility.
“What we don’t want is to build an institution. That’s why we’re learning and going to see these farms. We hope to build an innovative LTC home where we don’t lock folks up that have dementia and Alzheimer’s, where they can live freely, where they can participate in regular life chores and activities and really build that rural aspect into the home.
“We’re learning and looking to our partners in the community to help form what that looks like in Canada – it’s a little bit different than Europe, where they don’t get the snow we do… but it’s something we’re focusing on,” she said.
Bonnie Roe, lead of Aging Together as Community Haliburton Highlands (ATAC), said HHHS has an opportunity to be a leader in Canada for providing innovative care models for seniors.
“There’s the Butterfly, Green House, Eden Alternative, Green Care Farms – all principles based on care being person-centred, home-like and composed of smaller groupings of units,” Roe said. “Staff connect with the person, based on interests, needs, and feelings – not on a routine that works for the organization.”
She said HHHS staff have already incorporated some aspects of the Butterfly model in Minden and Haliburton.
Roe feels the County is fortunate to have Kaasalainen collaborating with HHHS on a collective vision for LTC and rural dementia care.
“She was instrumental in organizing this trip to glean first-hand knowledge from colleagues in the Netherlands so that it can be incorporated philosophically and structurally into the new building plans at Hyland Crest,” Roe said.
