Dutch town built specifically for people with dementia

Taking care of someone with dementia can be extremely challenging but a Dutch town is being built specially for that. While many of us would do anything to avoid being in a nursing home sometimes we really have no choice.

One village in Amsterdam decided to dedicate itself to dementia patients and provide people with a chance to live a normal life in a safe environment. Hogeweyk is located in the Dutch province of Weesp. The entire village is a nursing home that is designed to replicate the real world.

Dementia patients who live here can do fairly typical things that most old people do including visit the grocery store, complain about the weather and take part in a game of bingo.

The village is a collaboration with Dementia Villages Associates, which is an organisation that seeks to humanize elderly care. There are 23 houses in the village and each home has six to seven occupants with a caregiver who prepares the meals and drives the resident to social gatherings as well as helping them with tasks such as shopping for food at the market.

Dutch Town with High Quality Treatment?

The community also has a website called Be Advice, which describes the project and the village as “inclusive; truly person-centred with high-quality care and treatment; revolutionary; groundbreaking; disruptive; and sustainable.

The website states; “Many Alzheimer’s experts have, however, valued The Hogeweyk for what it really is: a familiar and safe environment which people with dementia live while retaining their own identity and autonomy as much as possible, adding that all the staff that works at The Hogeweyk “uses their professional skills to actually support the residents and are, therefore, certainly not actors.”

The facility manager and co-founder Eloy van Hal of the Dutch town said that this community will help those having dementia to suffer a little less in later years. He said that this design helps uphold people’s sense of independence.

Residents are divided into groups and each individual has a private room and the can use common areas the way they like. Anyone can go wherever they like and they can visit the grocery store, restaurant, barber shop or theatre as everything is set up with their condition in mind. Studies show that giving patients with dementia independence in safe setting helps with challenges like hostility and confusion as well as increasing physical activity.

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