As Cases Soar, ‘Dementia Villages’ Look Like the Future of Home Care
On a recent morning in this quiet village outside Amsterdam, an older woman stocked shelves inside the local supermarket. In the plaza just outside the store, a group of men sat around a table, chatting the hours away. Over in the town square, a woman in a hijab sipped coffee outside the cafe.
If it looked like a typical Dutch town — with a restaurant (which is open to the public), a theater, a pub and a cluster of quaint two-story brick townhomes on a gridded street map — well, that’s the point. Many of the people here don’t realize that they are living in the world’s first so-called “dementia village,” and it can be difficult for visitors to tell the difference between the residents and the plain-clothed staff.
Gert Bosscher, whose wife Anneke, received an Alzheimer’s disease diagnosis six years ago and has been a resident for nine months, said the decision to have her at Hogeweyk was an easy one. “My first impression after entering Hogeweyk was an open area, decorated with flowers, with a relaxed atmosphere in which clients and relatives were walking around freely or sitting on a terrace drinking a cup of tea,” he said. “To be honest, at that moment I had made my choice already.”
Source: The New York Times
