Seniors with dementia at Iki-Iki Day-Care Service have become a natural part of the community of the Mitsuya Shotengai shopping street, a kindly and caring neighborhood in Osaka’s Yodogawa-ku.
Hakuaisha, the social welfare corporation that operates Iki-Iki Day-Care Service,
has a history of about 120 years, but Iki-Iki was the first undertaking that
took us off the premises and out into the community. The impetus came from the
passionate commitment of our staff, who wanted to rethink institutional care
and find a way to get back to Hakuaisha’s basic principle that “the elderly come
first.” With these goals in mind we opened the center on April 4, 2005.
Iki-Iki offers no special recreational activities or other formal programs.
Instead, it provides a place outside the home where people with dementia can
spend their time normally and naturally. We emphasize and value each aspect of
daily life.
The big event of the day at Iki-Iki is mealtime. Our motto is, “Decide today’s
meal today!” Sometimes we all go out to the shopping street and decide the menu
together by seeing what the stores have. We also have our seniors do the cooking
by consulting with one another. To supplement ordinary contact with the shopkeepers
and others on the shopping street, Iki-Iki publishes a newsletter for the merchants
and families of people with dementia. We also set up a booth at the summer street
festival. In this way the lifestyle of our day-care center helps us fit in naturally
as members of the neighborhood.
Seniors
using the center
People at Iki-Iki go actively out onto the shopping street instead
of spending all their time indoors. In this way the seniors make acquaintances
and develop places with which they are familiar and comfortable. Some seniors
who are hard of hearing and not in the habit of conversing have begun greeting
the shopkeepers on their own initiative.- Staff
The staff have become more flexible in their thinking and able to approach
each person in accordance with his or her individual needs, instead of giving
everyone the same cookie-cutter treatment.
- Shopkeepers, etc.
There were some shopkeepers on the shopping street who
were worried that they would be unable to offer service tailored to seniors.
However, when they saw the seniors from Iki-Iki shopping or strolling up and
down the shopping street chatting, they gained an appreciation of the importance
of this style of service.
The Iki-Iki owes its success to the understanding and cooperation of the shopkeepers
and others on the shopping street and of community residents.
- As the program has continued, it has been wonderful to see the residents
of the community coming to accept as perfectly natural the sight of people with
dementia living enjoyable, vital lives within the community.
- In a society that tends to put efficiency above all else, the program demonstrates
that even people with dementia can continue to live naturally within the community
if they have a relaxed, low-key environment that values each individual and people
helping to sustain that environment.
- The program has been implemented in a small corner of the city, but this
very element gives it tremendous potential to spread throughout the country.
- The program offers a model that we would like to see adopted in care service
providers around the country, as it goes beyond the conventional concepts and
systems associated with day care by placing top priority on how the seniors themselves
want to spend their time, and by employing staff that are committed to helping
people live according to their own preferences and their own pace despite their
dementia.
