Cabins with screens let home’s residents see their loved ones
Dementia sufferers can communicate from behind a Perspex shield to prevent the spread of coronavirus
THEA VROOMEN sits smiling across the table at her daughter and son-inlaw, much as she has done three times a week since she arrived at her care home in Eindhoven.
Only this time, she cannot reach out and touch her family, who are separated from her by a Perspex window in this specially converted Portakabin designed to enable visits during the coronavirus pandemic.
Since April 20, visits have been banned to the Netherlands’ 2,500 care homes to protect their 120,000 vulnerable residents from the virus. An events company, Flexotels, is now converting its 250 rooms, once two-bed temporary hotel rooms for festivals and gatherings all around Europe, into care home visitor cabins, separated by a screen, sanitised between visits and complete with baby phones for the hard of hearing.
A doily and a vase of flowers help to add a sense of cosy normality to the situation for Mrs Vroomen, who has Alzheimer’s and has deeply missed the reassuring presence of her family.
“Things are fine,” the 78-year-old tells her daughter, Karin. “Only, why can’t we sit outside?”
“It was very nice,” says Karin. “I think it’s very important for her to see us. I don’t think she would forget us, but if I didn’t see her for two or three months I do think her health would decline.”
Ingrid van den Berg, location manager at the Vitalis ’t Lint care home in Eindhoven where Mrs Vroomen lives, has been so pleased with the response from the home’s 86 residents and their families that she has invested €3,000 (£2,600) in booking the cabin for a month.
“We have a lot of families who send cards and flowers but now we have an option for personal meetings, and that is what people need,” she says.
Physical closeness is especially important for people in nursing homes, 70 per cent of whom have dementia, according to Prof Philip Scheltens, director of the Alzheimer Centre at the VU teaching hospital in Amsterdam.
“The lockdown of nursing homes has led to extremely emotional circumstances on the side of families not being able to see their loved ones any more and on the side of the inhabitants, not understanding why they do not receive any visits any more,” he told The Telegraph.
Gerjoke Wilmink, executive director of Alzheimer Nederland, said: “A visitors’ cabin is a great idea and we hope more locations can have one.”