110 | LIFESTYLE Hawthorndale Care Village T T Russell Fredric A ‘better way’ for dementia care The $35 million development allows people to live in small homes built with dementia design principles rather than a hospital environment. A ‘better way’ for dementia care is on the near horizon in Invercargill with the development of Hawthorndale Care Village. Stage one, comprising groundwork and civil works, is near completion on the village’s 2.6 hectare greenfield property, located on the former Hawthorndale primary school site. Project manager Helen Robinson says the $35 million development was born out the recognition about a decade ago of the need to replace the existing Calvary Hospital and Rest Home, which has the same board of trustees as those behind Hawthorndale Care Village. “Calvary as a building for aged care was becoming slightly outdated. There was a discussion around how they would go about those upgrades and the manager, Margaret Brown, felt there was a better way of supporting people, rather than the traditional, institutional type of care.” Following the discovery of the innovative Dutch De Hogeweyk community-based aged care model, this became the heart of the vision for developing Hawthorndale Care Village. “As opposed to the current institutional model, this is a social model with the underlying objective to allow residents to live a normal life and to exercise choice over their daily lives where possible.” It has been shown that in this environment, residents are more active and need less medication. The village is designed to allow people to live in small homes built with dementia design principles rather than a hospital environment. There will be 13 houses catering for six to seven residents per home providing the full spectrum of rest home, dementia and hospital level care. In addition, 19 independent living villas will be available for those not requiring rest home level care, and there is scope for 30 further independent living villas and apartments onsite. Safe and secure access to the outdoors and to the wider village amenities will also be a key feature. These amenities will include landscaped gardens and streets, a café, dairy, theatre, chapel, playground, a men’s shed and vegetable garden, all accessible within a secure boundary. The project is expected to generate 300 jobs during the construction phase, and once open, 11 new jobs and to retain 87 jobs from the Calvary Hospital transition. Of the total project cost, $6.5 million has been raised from donations, with the balance being funded from various grants and generous support from significant donors. For the trustees who are well-known community figures and who each bring unique skillsets in business, management and marketing, the village project is personal as each one has experience with some form of dementia in their family, Helen says. “There’s been a whole raft of work that’s needed to happen to get us to this point and those people give their time freely, they are all volunteers on the board. It’s a huge undertaking that they’ve got to this point.” The term ‘dementia’ is generic for all dementia type of illnesses and includes Alzheimer’s disease. Based on the Dementia Economic Impact Report 2020 prepared for Alzheimers New Zealand September 2021, the nation is facing a huge, predicted increase of dementia and dementia related illnesses with no cure in sight, Helen says. “In 2016 there were 62,000 people with dementia in New Zealand; by 2030 it is set to go up to 102,000 and by 2050 that’s predicted to be 170,000. (Dementia Economic Impact Report 2020 Prepared for Alzheimers New Zealand September 2021) “That was one of the reasons for having the focus on dementia, but also, we have this tidal wave coming towards us and there’s potential for a lot of those people to be much younger
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