Creating A Place and Role for Older People with Dementia through Multigenerational Exchanges
Rehab Home Ippo was established in 2011 as a small day care service for older people. Four years later, it combined that service with a small nursery school. That led to an important discovery: clients who, despite the staff’s best efforts, never smiled or engaged in activities suddenly lit up when they saw the children at the nursery. That realization triggered an innovative new approach to the company’s work: they decided to create a space where multigenerational exchanges could be carried out by combining the senior day care service, nursery school, and later a daycare for severely mentally and physically handicapped children in one facility.
Connecting Education and Welfare through TANO
TANO is a non-contact gamification system that promotes movement and social engagement for health promotion and rehabilitation for older people. It is being used in care facilities in Japan and overseas. The initiative seeks to connect education and welfare, promote society-wide cooperation through industry-government-academia partnerships, and create an environment in which children and students can develop an awareness of social issues from an early stage.
Older People Take the Lead! Passing on the Vitality of the Region
The Hedate Tea Room was established to coordinate and promote cooperation among various local organizations. This group, led from the bottom up and relying primarily on volunteers, has revitalized activities in the community, holding intergenerational events that pass on the stories and traditions of the region and give a sense of purpose to the older residents.
Home Nursing to Regenerate the Town
Nurse & Craft addresses aging, rural communities by establishing a home-visit nursing station to provide medical treatment and care at home, taking advantage of telemedicine to access medical doctors on the mainland. They also offer a combination of health monitoring technologies, regular home visits by nurses, and health classes to improve medical literacy and digital literacy among older residents and promote healthier living.
Go Bike Project—Ronda Kalusugan Program
Go Bike trains young volunteers to become community responders—“Go Bikers”—in times of emergencies and disasters, and to conduct regular health monitoring for older people (the Ronda Kalusugan Program), which includes blood pressure and blood sugar monitoring. They use bicycles equipped with first-aid kits, medicine, blood pressure apparatus, random blood sugar checking kits, and disaster response equipment that enables them to help those in their communities.
Memory Home
Shanghai Jinmei Care for the Elderly established Memory Homes to support the city’s growing elderly population. It is a community-based space where social workers provide those with dementia and their families with professional support. These homes also provide educational programs, preventive activities, cognitive function assessments, and support for caregivers.
Manoottangwai Intergenerational Online Media Campaign
Manoottangwai, a Thai online media platform, targets older people to create a positive mindset and help them achieve an active lifestyle, and it targets younger people to help them understand that post-retirement wellbeing.
The Intergenerational Self-Help Club (ISHC) Development Model
Since 2006, HelpAge International in Vietnam (HAIV) and local partners have piloted the ground-breaking Intergenerational Self-Help Club (ISHC) model—community-based organizations that promote healthy longevity through a range of inter-generational activities.
Buddy HomeCare: Community-Based Healthcare Management and Monitoring System
By leveraging smartphone technology with their community-based healthcare and monitoring system mobile app, Buddy HomeCare assists three target groups: older people with low incomes, older people with middle and high incomes, and youth with low incomes.
The Housing Complex as One Big Family
Grundtvig has created a small, multi-functional care facility within an existing housing complex in Japan, allowing residents to age in place and encouraging cross-generational exchanges and community revitalization.