Inclusive design for people living with dementia… that works for us all

At ExtraCare our mission is to create sustainable communities that provide homes people want, lifestyles they enjoy and care if it’s needed. The first part, ‘homes people want’ is very much part of our Dementia Strategy objective to assess and improve our built environments.

There is a lot of information available about ‘good dementia design’, notably work from Sterling University’s Dementia Centre and The Kings Fund’s ’enhancing the healing environment’ tool.

Information such as this improves understanding around the challenges that people living with dementia may face when environments are not dementia friendly and disable rather than enable.

As a developer of large scale retirement communities with populations that live with a wide range of needs and abilities, adopting general ‘what works’ principles is not the way to approach a vast and long-term commitment to improve our built environments.

Equally, while many of our residents do not live with a dementia or a cognitive issue, it is clear that what works well for people with dementia works well for everyone.

We all want light, easy to navigate environments that reduce confusion and feel pleasant. This is true for me. As a 35 year old with mild long distance sight issues, I struggle to read some signage in our environments, having to get so close that I see my reflection staring back at me.

Our approach has become more about ‘inclusive design’ that works for everyone, including people living with dementia.

To start the process, a long process that will no doubt take years to fully implement a we, with support from colleagues at the University of Worcester’s Association for Dementia Studies, explored what we are doing well and what we could do better. And importantly, how that fits with the overall aesthetic of our communities, ensuring they continue to be homes people want.

From our investigation we landed on a set of inclusive design principles that drew on best practice but were also tailored to our environments. These are now available to use when we consider designing a completely new environments or to refer to when refurbishing an existing space.