Fostering community, creating place, considering home for people living with dementia (or anyone else who cares about enjoying a good quality of life as they age)

Living Well in York Region: January 25, 2019

Elizabeth Kelson, PhD

ekelson@ryerson.ca

Outline

• Explore the meanings of community, place, home

• Discuss why these matter for living well

• Describe how persons with dementia can be supported by community

• Consider all of this in relation to our own life

• Your homework!

“Community”?

Communities can exist without being in the same place—from networks of friends with like interests, to major religions, ethnic or political communities…

(Cresswell, 2004, p. 68)

Home is…

• a physical place,

• a relational space,

• part memory,

• part social relationship,

• and part idealization(de Medeiros et al., 2014)

The meaning of place…

We are shaped by the physical and social environments ofour life—where we were born, where we grew up, where welive today, and where we grow old…we transform thespaces of our life into places of meaning and significance...

(Rowles & Bernard, 2013, p. 3)

Public spaces, creating place

Our use of and identification with public spaces is an essential component of an overall sense of being in place

(Rowles & Bernard, 2013, p. 4).

Aging-in-place has been described as…

...a pervasive element of public policy, in association with an increasing emphasis, verging on obsession, of enabling older adults to maintain

independent living circumstances.(Rowles & Bernard, 2013, p. 8)

Each of these terms have definitions that are:

• Cultural

• Political

• Social/Psychological

• Personal

•Definitions can overlap

The challenge

•How to support aging-in-place in context of dementia?

•What helps or hinders people who live with dementia, and their families / friends, to thrive in the community?

Answers include…

•Physical/built environment – private and public

• Social/relational – public and private

•Political

Blue spaces

Green spaces

Positive relationship between urban green space…

• and physical activity

• and social activity

Forms of housing/living arrangements/levels of care

• Family home

• Condo, apartment

• Aging in Co-housing

• Assisted-Living

• Retirement home

• Long-term care home

• à private/public spaces intersect and are shaped by care needs

Amenities

Amenities

Transit

Mobility/Wayfinding

Public toilets

Physical activity

Public art

Linking the physical and social environment…

Social isolation

How to reduce loneliness and isolation in the community?

•Group interventions effective - education focus, social activities targeting specific groups (cultural, women, newly widowed, etc.)

•One-to-one - evidence less clear

• Social media - emerging

How do we foster community, create place, feel at home…for people with dementia

(and anyone else who cares about enjoying a good quality of life as they age)?

• Understand the vital connections between the social and physical and political environment.

• Participate in building these connections for ourselves and our friends/families.

• Understand that it is never too early to make changes in your life that allow you to benefit from these connections.

What will you do?

The ache for home lives in all of us, the safe place where we can go and we are not to be questioned.

— Maya Angelou

References

Bartlett, R. & O’Connor, D. (2010). Broadening the dementia debate: Towards social citizenship. Bristol, UK: The Policy Press.

Cresswell, T. (2004). Place: a short introduction. Oxford, UK:mBlackwell Publishing Inc.

de Medeiros, K., Rubinstein, R. L., & Doyle, P. J. (2014). A place of one’s own: Reinterpreting the meaning of home among childless older women (pp. 79-

102). In Rowles, G. D. & Bernard, M. (Eds). Environmental Gerontology: Making meaningful places in old age, (pp. 3-24). New York, NY: Springer

Publishers.

Grierson, B. (2014). What makes Olga run? Toronto, ON: Random House Ltd.

Petersen, E., Schoen, G., Liedtke, G., & Zech, A. (2019). Relevance of urban green space for physical activity and health-related quality of life in older

adults. Quality in Ageing and Older Adults, 19(3), 158-166.

Rowles, G. D. & Bernard, M. (Eds) (2013). Chapter 1. Environmental Gerontology: Making meaningful places in old age, (pp. 3-24). New York, NY: Springer

Publishers.

Sullivan, M. P., Victor, C. R., & Thomas, M. (2016). Understanding and alleviating loneliness in later life: Perspectives of older people. Quality in Ageing and

Older Adults, 17, 3, 168-178.

Wahl, H. W., & Weisman, G. D. (2003). Environmental gerontology at the beginning of the new millennium: Reflections on its historical, empirical, and

theoretical development. The Gerontologist, 43(5), 616-627.