ARU Research Report 2019

The Up Project 27 ‘…for the children I think they just act as if it was just their grandparents and as if they were, to use the normal vocation quotation “just treat them as normal individuals” who don’t have dementia or Alzheimer’s or any problems, they just treat them as general human beings which, to see, is amazing…’ (Member of care home staff)) ‘I think the residents feel more, they feel at ease with us anyway but with the children I feel that they can just talk as they’re talking normally rather than having to try and have things explained to them by us; we’re talking at an adult level, they’re talking at their own level and it’s great.’ (Member of care home staff) Community Inclusion & Assets Care home staff and relatives described the children’s visits as promoting the inclusion (real or perceived) of older adults into the wider community, building a community connection between the school and care home. This community recognises older adults as members and contributors, despite their often declining health statuses and segregation from the outside world: ‘I’m trying to get my residents in to the community more and the community in to the home more, because I don’t want to see a home as separate from the community; we are community.’ (Member of care home staff) For relatives is was also about the recognition of their loved ones as still valued, able to engage and visible: ‘Yes, I think it’s good for everybody; they [older adults] don’t feel like they’ve just been put away and hidden so I think it’s good.” (Relative) ‘And equally, I think for the children, as I said to build up a relationship…to be involved with it, that they’re not, people in the care home aren’t just put away somewhere to eek out their last days, that they can have a full life still and interact.’ (Relative) Interestingly, the children too reflected on the segregated lives that people in a care home might lead and felt their visits might ameliorate this isolation. ‘Maybe it [visits] made them happier because they were always alone, so it’s just a care home, usually they get no visitors, if they had maybe a son or a daughter they could have got visitors, but usually they don’t get visitors, so it made them happier, made them more active, so that they have something to do, because they’re sitting down bored, maybe listening to music, they don’t really have phones to entertain themselves, so they usually rely on visitors who come, or otherwise they just chat and sit.’ (Child 7)

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