As garden designers my colleague, Mark Rendell, and I carried out a research project in 2013 to answer a simple question, "Why aren't care home gardens more actively used?", particularly for dementia, and even when they meet the latest guidance. Through our quite extraordinary journey, where our world was changed as designers by the power of a bunch of buttercups and dandelions, we discovered that the care home’s culture plays a key role in how well their residents can use their outside spaces.
Much of our study had us wondering if us, as designers, were actually needed, fortunately we are but this too is in a changed and more supportive role needing to match the current abilities of the care setting. Homes that implement designs beyond the homes capabilities and cultural practices will often fall out of use as the home will return to their previous level of engagement before a new garden once the novelty has worn off. This can be a costly mistake not just for the care home but also for the designer, who may be blamed for not having achieved with the garden all the home had hoped.
In reality it is too easy to blame the space, the designer a lack of money or staff when actually the answer lays in the culture of the organisation. We created a diagnostic tool, The Map, to help homes understood the obstacles getting in their way and how to move forward. This also shows when and how a designers can provide the right support as a home grows in its use of the outside space ensuring a cost effective and active garden results.
We’ve started to share our findings with our design and care sector colleagues using this tool via our new company Step Change Design and this has been positively received. We are aware of the need to do this more rapidly than we can do in person if we are going to be able to help more people living in care settings enjoy their gardens. We have been published in the Journal for Dementia Care and have shared helpful hints to care settings in various articles, all of which can be seen on our download page http://www.stepchange-design.co.uk/downloads
We’ve funded the research and this tool ourselves and are now writing a book to help us spread our work faster and more widely without us present, so that it can benefit residents in care settings to be able to use the outside as and when they wish to. As Step Change Design is still in its infancy we’re now turning to the power of crowdfunding to help us get the book edited and published.
We go into much more detail about who we are, our research and the help we need on our crowdfunding page and you can see a short video of Mark and I there too along with our Map tool: http://igg.me/at/lets-go-into-the-garden . If you are able to share this link, like us on twitter or Facebook or even contribute that would be amazing. There is also a unique opportunity to have your name, or your organsisations name, in the first print run of the book showing your support for enabling residents with dementia to be able to enjoy the garden as and when they wish to.
Thank you so much for your support, we really appreciate it!
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