{"id":13340,"date":"2023-08-10T07:06:00","date_gmt":"2023-08-10T13:06:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shieldagency.com\/blog\/?p=13340"},"modified":"2023-07-28T11:46:21","modified_gmt":"2023-07-28T17:46:21","slug":"nursing-home-and-the-graduate-who-lives-there","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shieldagency.com\/blog\/nursing-home-and-the-graduate-who-lives-there\/","title":{"rendered":"Nursing Home and the graduate who lives there"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Positive News.com<\/a> | by Oliver Balch<\/a> | July 24, 2023 | Nursing Home | More Blog Articles<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meet the young graduate who lives in a nursing home<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

There aren\u2019t many twentysomethings who would opt to live in an old people\u2019s home, but for broke student Teun Toebes, it\u2019s an experience that has changed his life \u2013 and the lives of his housemates<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cake, candles, banter, games, laughter, fresh air. Teun Toebes remembers his recent birthday as a total blast. He and his pals \u2013 Christi, Janny, Jopie, Ad. All of them just hang out, shooting the breeze, savoring the moment, and enjoying life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It doesn\u2019t bother him that they are all at least three times his age. Nor that they might have forgotten the event by now. They are his housemates. The people who this 24-year-old care ethics graduate has chosen to live with \u2013 first as a broke student researcher looking for a cheap room, now as a friend, ally, and campaigner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ad is his best friend in the care facility in the small Dutch town of Amstelveen that Toebes has called home for the last couple of years. As with all the venue\u2019s elderly residents, Ad lives with dementia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A former electrician and father of two, 78-year-old Ad is one of 55 million people worldwide with the condition. On average, most will live eight to 10 years after their initial diagnosis \u2013 the latter part of which many in the industrialized north will spend living in institutional care.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Toebes\u2019 first exposure to the condition came as a 17-year-old intern in a local nursing home. Three years later, his great-aunt Greet was diagnosed with Alzheimer\u2019s and came to live there. The serendipity allowed him to care for her directly, an experience that left him with a strange sense of privilege.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite Greet\u2019s confusion, she read his moods and called him \u201cmy boy\u201d; he, in turn, washed her, laughed with her, and, ultimately, coordinated her palliative care at the end. From that moment on, Toebes became convinced that it\u2019s not only possible to connect with people with dementia but also to enjoy a lasting and reciprocal relationship.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Regrettably, that isn\u2019t how institutional care in Europe and the UK works. Individuals like Greet stop being someone\u2019s sister, someone\u2019s neighbor, or someone\u2019s lover; instead, they become someone primarily defined by their condition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDehumanising\u201d is the word Toebes comes back to most often to describe the situation. As he puts it: \u201cI live together with the most beautiful 130 housemates, but they are all sorted together according to their dementia, the system sees them as the same.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The most startling result of this logic is the restrictions. In Toebes\u2019 facility, the doors are kept locked. Even access to the garden is restricted. So, for his birthday party, he had to request the key from the care home\u2019s authorities. The latter cites understandable safety concerns, yet the parallels with the penitentiary system are as unavoidable as they are unfortunate. Hairdressers, doctors, dentists \u2013 all are brought into the facility, extreme risk-aversion means there are few opportunities for the residents to go out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I live together with the most beautiful 130 housemates<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Inside, protocols reign. If the temperature tops 30C, everyone must eat ice cream. The risk of salmonella means no soft-boiled eggs. \u2018Care\u2019 trumps \u2018home\u2019 every time, adds Toebes. Just consider the d\u00e9cor: a 200-meter-long corridor, easy-to-wipe tile flooring, strip lights everywhere, and walls with safety notices as decoration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The effect of such a \u201csurrealistic nobody\u2019s land\u201d on people\u2019s identities is profound, he believes. Even the toilet habits of residents are monitored. \u2018Firm\u2019, \u2018watery\u2019, \u2018discolored\u2019: down it all goes, recorded in his housemates\u2019 medical dossiers.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIf you\u2019re reading in your mother\u2019s records what kind of sh*t she has every day, then you will start seeing her more and more as a patient.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He doesn\u2019t hold individual carers to blame. In a way, they too are subjects of a system that, as Toebes puts it, places \u201ccontrol and safety\u201d above \u201chappiness and being together\u201d. To combat this, Toebes introduced Friday drinks, camping evenings, and trips to visit grown-up children for the residents, small things that have transformed the torpid atmosphere of the care home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To kick off a conversation about what an alternative, people-centered dementia care might look like, Toebes has penned a book \u2013\u00a0The Housemates<\/a>, out in English in August \u2013 already a No.1 bestseller in the Netherlands.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He recently set off on a tour of 11 countries on four continents to see how other nations approach dementia care, making a documentary that will be screened at a G20 summit on the disease later this year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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If we keep seeing the human being, he or she never really disappears<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Each country adopts a slightly different strategy, he discovered. In South Korea, for instance, the emphasis weighs heavily on prevention through healthy lifestyle habits. In South Africa, the focus is on care within the family. In Moldova, residential care is not segregated by disease, meaning dementia-only facilities don\u2019t exist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His main takeaway lessons? Firstly, money alone won\u2019t solve the problem. The UK spends \u00a314.2bn a year caring for people living with dementia. That comes out of people\u2019s taxes. Yet, it\u2019s money for a system that no taxpayer in their right mind \u201cwould ever want to live in\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

An even more important lesson: everyone needs freedom and friendship, whatever their condition. Even if their mind is lost to dementia? Even then, he insists: \u201cIf we keep seeing the human being, he or she never really disappears.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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