Nearly Ready for New Residents

STAGE ONE of the new Strathearn aged care development will open this month and locals are invited to come and celebrate.

It has been six years in the making and approximately $23 million has been invested in the state of the art facility to date.

Matthew Downie, chief executive officer of Strathearn Aged Care said it was great to watch the project take shape.

“It will be wonderful, fantastic and a little bit of a relief to get the first stage done and then we’ll start looking at the next stages and where to from here,” said Mr Downie.

“When I first started we didn’t even have the land and with a project of this size we have to deal with three levels of government, local, state and federal and getting it right and doing your homework and doing the research to try and bring as many best practice ideas across into this facility is something we’ve been aspiring towards,” he said.

“Making the numbers work has been a challenge, while some people may think otherwise, aged care is not very well funded,” Matthew Downie said.

SMART DESIGN

The new facility will have four houses with 16 bedrooms in each.

The first house to be opened will be for residents with dementia and the second will be for general aged care.

The design of the buildings incorporates smart architecture, age friendly interior design which keeps a homely feel and state of the art technology.

“All of the houses are built around the same principles because good dementia design is good aged care design,” said Mr Downie.

“The minor differences include the secure courtyard space, some more discrete ways of managing the entry and exit points so when people with dementia experience sun-downers where they want to leave the facility to go home, they don’t become frustrated trying to get out of a locked door, so we’ve disguised the entry and exit points as much as possible so that they don’t have that level of frustration,” he said.

“Each of the bedrooms doors don’t face other doors, because sometimes with wondering behaviour they go straight ahead so they will walk into another residents bedroom so by offsetting the doors, it alleviates that they have to turn left or right and they will then get going and will head towards the lounge area.

“We also have secured bedrooms each resident will have a key fob which they can swipe to enter their room, if they are not able to do that they will wear a pendant or a bracelet which will detect when they are near their room and it will unlock their door,” he said.

“It all improves security and reduces challenging behaviours where residents are wondering into other people’s rooms relocating their personal belongings and things, that will alleviate those issues,” Matthew Downie said.

MAKING THE TRANSITON

Susan East, care manager at Strathearn Aged Care will be managing the first house and assisting both staff and residents make the transition to the new facility.

“I am overjoyed I can’t wait to come over here,” said Ms East.

“I’m most looking forward to watching the staff develop with the residents, my experience with dementia specific is that staff feel so rewarded; you see them connecting to the residents and their family more, rather than just doing a task for them and going to do another task,” she said.

“I like the idea that we are starting small, we’re getting residents comfortable, we’re getting staff comfortable and then we start expanding.

“When I told them we would want them to sit down and do happy hour of a night with the residents they were surprised and I said we’d be doing Friday night football and I wanted them to bring the popcorn and the chips out and sit down and enjoy it with the residents.

“Nurses are not used to that, but this is part of being a family and the residents will start seeing you are part of their family and want to include you, so do what you do at home we are going to make cakes, make bread and the smell of cooking in the kitchen will make residents want to eat and they’ll wander in and put the kettle on and things, things that they would do at home,” she said.

“I like the idea that we are starting small, opening one section at a time, we’re getting residents comfortable, we’re getting staff comfortable and then we start expanding,” Susan East said.

Some of the features include:

• Pre-programmed lighting which dim at dusk but brighten when activity is detected, reducing light intrusion of a night but providing safety when residents move around the facility;
• Sensors which detect when residents are out of bed and light their way to the bathroom or can be programmed to alert staff if a patient may have had a fall;
• Contrasting black and white bathrooms to assist with failing eyesight;
• Smart TV’s with 200 mega bite internet speeds to connect residents to health care specialists for appointments or to spend facetime with their families form the comfort of their room;
• All rooms have individual air-conditioning control;
• Memory boxes at each bedroom door to personalise the entry and also assists residents with dementia identify their rooms;
• A smart key system which opens a patients room as they approach;
• A large kitchen built to commercial specifications where cooks will prepare all meals daily, but where residents can treat it as their own space to cook a cake or make a cup of tea;
• A hair dressing salon;
• A double air-lock entry to the facility for infection control, and
• Staff and storage facilities which are in a connecting corridor between houses, removing the business of aged care from the home of the residents.

YOU’RE INVITED

The community is invited to celebrate the opening, enjoy morning tea and see tour the facility.

• When: 11am, Sunday, July 17
• Where: Strathearn Aged Care, Gundy Road, Scone.