 In the community where Mizuhashi House is located, a safety patrol has been set up to protect children from crime. Residents of the group home are participating in this activity as members of the Chojukai (Longevity Society).
The impetus for participation came out of the fact that one of the watch stations
for the safety patrol proposed by the PTA was within sight of the group home.
And because the route schoolchildren take to and from school coincided with the
course residents of the group home use for their walks.
 The
job of patrol guards is to stand watch at the intersection on their assigned
day, wearing a safety patrol armband, starting from the time the children are
dismissed from school. Apart from their assigned shifts, the residents of Mizuhashi
House also treat their walk time as patrol duty. To help the residents themselves
understand that they are performing a useful function and to make the task enjoyable,
they wear special hanten jackets that they made together with the staff. We have
also affixed a “Crime Prevention Patrol” sticker to the car used by the group
home and have residents carry out their patrol duties when they get in the car
to go shopping, visit the doctor, and so forth.
 People
with dementia
A sense of purpose and duty about going out on patrol energizes
the minds and bodies of the residents, even those who are generally reluctant
to go out. In winter, residents are often unwilling to go out in the cold and
tend to suffer from lack of exercise as a result, but their determination to
go out on patrol has helped solve this problem.- Group home and community
Recently people from the community recognized residents
of the group home when they participated in the community’s summer festival and
took a snapshot of the occasion for the residents to keep. Thanks to the kindness
of community members, residents of the group home are now invited to participate
in sports day, school open house presentations, and other school events. Their
patrol activities have given them a foothold in the community and allowed them
to gradually meld into it.
Modest though it may be, we are hopeful that this initiative will spread and that in the future it will become common for people with dementia to act as protectors, not just the protected.
- A wonderful aspect of this program is that it demonstrates, by their actual
activities within the community, that people with dementia can be contributors
to society and not merely recipients of assistance as kind protectors helping
ensure that the children of the community can live there in safety.
- Thanks to this activity, people who had refused to go out can now be seen moving about energetically on their own initiative. In this sense it offers a more advanced model by enabling people to continue being useful to others in their daily lives. The program demonstrates the possibility and the necessity of reconsidering concepts like personal fulfillment and rehabilitation within the context of each patient’s life.
- The program demonstrates the possibility for a
group home, acting as a base within the community, to send the community the
message that we all need to reconsider our hectic way of life.
- The program is a steady, patient undertaking, and its success is the result of the day-to-day efforts of the staff who support the residents in these activities. If group homes throughout Japan would launch efforts of this sort, it would have a positive impact not only on the quality of support for patients but also on the value system of other people in the community.
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