In the field of dementia care, professionals and researchers consider an appropriate physical environment to be an effective therapeutic element in the delivery of quality care for individuals with Alzheimer's disease and related dementing illnesses. Current research suggests that in the next decade ten thousand or more special care units (SCUs) and day care programs will be established with therapeutic design features that are intended to better support these residents. In Phase II it is this project's objective to develop a system of tools that researchers, design professionals, and particularly operators of care settings can use to evaluate, modify, or create therapeutic environments for such individuals. Specifically, in Phase II the project will further develop the methodological approaches and validate the design criteria which were operationalized and received preliminary validation in Phase I. The project will produce the Hearthstone SCU Design System, an applications package which includes a computerized bar-code reader data collection system, software templates, and user-friendly manuals that can improve the quality of environments in nursing homes, residential and day care centers and private homes where people with dementia live.
The research will result in the development of an applications package that SCU administrators, designers and others can use to evaluate, program, renovate and/or design therapeutically supportive environments. With over ten thousand new SCUs expected to be built in the next decade, the commercial applications are vast.
