Peace of mind thrives at Australia’s first dementia village

Garry Collins was in his late 50s when something began to change in his brain

Mae and Garry Collins at Korongee Village, Australia’s first designed dementia village, in Glenorchy, Hobart, where Garry now lives Picture: Peter Mathew

Garry Collins was in his late 50s when something began to change in his brain. He would periodically become paranoid and delusional, and, as a retired nurse, he recognised only too well what was happening — the onset of dementia.

At 62, Mr Collins made the difficult decision to enter residential care. Normally, people with dementia face having to go into nursing homes with secure wards, but after researching options, Mr Collins and wife Mae found there was another place to go: Australia’s first dementia village.

Korongee Village in the northern suburbs of Hobart is a fully secure series of cul-de-sacs with 12 eight-bedroom homes, its own grocery store, cafe, multipurpose hall, that doubles as a cinema, and wellness centre where residents can have a beauty treatment, get a haircut or have a massage. The village is built in such a way that residents can wander its streets but be securely contained, with every aspect of its design aimed at reducing sensory overload, orientating residents through colour and facilitating independence.

Aged-care provider Glenview Community Services designed and built the village. CEO Lucy O’Flaherty travelled to Europe researching the design principles of dementia care and modelled Korongee on the best aspects of what she observed in homelike models of care villages primarily in The Netherlands.

“As a community, we’ve been providing supported housing for people living with a disability for decades,” she says. “And we know it works. That’s not to say it’s perfect, but it’s much better than institutional living. So we thought, how about we apply the same principles to aged care?

“Our hypothesis is that if we respond to the dementia design principles, as well as the care model, we can change the trajectory of dementia. We think people will be able to live longer if we can reduce distress and provide a better quality of life.”

According to Dementia Australia, the way an environment is designed can have a major impact on the health of a person living with dementia. Design principles include reducing physical risks, using contrasting colours to help with such things as locating door handles and grab rails, reducing unhelpful stimulation, creating familiar spaces, providing the option to be alone or with other people and providing links to the community. Korongee incorporates these through careful design and specialised training of staff. Gardens in each house are different – one is a vegie patch, another is an English country garden – and this helps residents locate their own place. “So if my house is next to the chook shed or the vegie garden, and I walk into another cul-de-sac, it’s enough of a visual cue for me to go ‘oh hang on, this isn’t my place’,” says Ms O’Flaherty. “Then when you go into the houses themselves, we’ve got little memory boxes outside residents’ rooms. We encourage families to put something in there that their loved one will recognise as theirs … a cue that this is their room.”

With the University of Tasmania, Glenview has designed a questionnaire residents complete before they move in, to assess “typology”. This means people are able to be placed into homes with residents who share similar values, likes and dislikes. “For example, nurturers is one of our homes. Nurturers are largely people who’ve been caregivers all their lives, largely women, so they’ve been teachers, nurses stay-at-home mums,” Ms O’Flaherty says.

Costs are comparable with other aged-care facilities. The fees of most residents are concessional, so the federal government subsidises costs. For those residents whose assets mean they don’t receive a concession, the average refundable accommodation deposit paid is $380,000 and the maximum care cost is $220 a day, although most people pay less.

Mr Collins says he rarely gets stressed living in the village, and enjoys “fiddling around with the guitar and doing things like that”.

“It really does matter to have the right atmosphere,” he says.

Mrs Collins says when they made the decision that Mr Collins should go into care it was “very traumatic”. “The day I left him was a big bereavement,” she says. “But I can come here and see Garry and he’s happy and smiling. Somebody was looking after us, that’s the best way I can describe it.”