Room turned into pub to help dementia sufferers
A SHELTERED accommodation building in Loughborough has transformed one of its rooms into an old fashioned pub to help trigger the memories of those who suffer with dementia.
Connaught House, in Victoria Place is a Places for People Extra Care + development, and has turned a rarely used room into an activities hub for over 55s .
Designed by Find Memory Care to encourage regular social activities, the new pub provides a social setting for residents to participate in a variety of activities such as: playing games and completing jigsaws, listening to music, reminiscing and more.
The pub even has its own bar - however Tara Wyllyams-Bond, housing and wellbeing adviser, told the Echo that it wouldn’t be serving beer and cocktails anytime soon.
Tara told the Echo that the room had received a fantastic reaction from those who had been using it since it had opened four weeks ago.
She said: “All the residents have loved it, the whole reason that we decided on it being an old fashioned pub is to encourage those who use the room to be able to reminisce about the good times they have had and we thought a pub setting would be perfect for that.
“It is often a place that you would go with friends and have lots of lovely memories and we want people to be able to come in and think about all those good times.”
The room has a specially designed mural that helps bring the room to life.
The mural was made by Find Memory Care and is designed to incorporate the right amount of ‘real’ attributes without causing confusion and frustration. The aim is to create an interactive reality, rather than a false one, and the mural incorporates three-dimensional, interactive elements.
This is the second dementia friendly project that Places for People have created, with the first being when the team turned a room at a residency in Bolton into a vintage café to trigger happy memories with the use of reminiscence and orientation aids.
Places for People have committed to making all of their care facilities dementia friendly within the next two years and Connaught House is one of their two flagship facilities.