Design features and technical wizardry – Ty Cariad

The development of Ty Cariad has been a lengthy process. Initial ideas were first sketched out in 2009 following the successful launch of Glyn Menai Dementia Care Centre in Bangor. Since then it has evolved with the input of a number of specialists.

Prof. Bob Woods, the Director of the Dementia Services Development Centre at Bangor University has been our primary design consultant with input to every stage of the home’s development. One of the key changes he initiated was making our households smaller and reducing the number of residents in each to just 12. Additionally he requested lounges at each end of the households to avoid dead end corridors, memory cabinets at each resident’s room, and gardens for all irrespective of which floor a household was on.

The gardens themselves were then designed with tempting pathways, plenty of seating, mock shop fronts and garages, secure borders, waist high planters, washing lines, and water features. We even have cars parked at the garages for the gentlemen to work on.

Our architects designed concertina glass walls to all lounges so that we could bring the outside in when the sun was out. They added intelligent sensors to bedrooms that recognise when a person gets out of bed. When this happens lights are gently illuminated in the resident’s room and an alert is sent to pagers worn by staff so that they can immediately respond.

Our interior design team have created flexible ‘Memory Stations’ at various points within each household that can mimic offices, shops, schoolrooms, etc., so that residents can relive their long-term memories and inhabit previous realities. In the late stage dementia household there is also a fully equipped Snoezelen Room – a multi-sensory experience incorporating mood music, light displays, illuminated bubble tubes, and colour changing fibre optics.

Ty Cariad is fully Wi-Fi enabled. Not only does this mean that families can Skype and FaceTime residents, it also allows all our care staff to have interactive tablet PC’s. These tablets let staff:

• update cloud-based resident care records in real time;
• access on-line life histories via the ‘Book of You’ app developed with Bangor University;
• view videos on YouTube with residents of Vera Lynn, Churchill, George Formby, or whomever;
• and play the host of dementia friendly apps that are now available online.