About the Book
Creating well-being, sensory and dementia friendly gardens in care homes
and other organisational environments is both rewarding and challenging. This
book guides garden designers to work more effectively alongside their care and
organisational clients to create well used and well-loved gardens for the long
term benefit of the residents and users there. The authors' study was
prompted after seeing many designed care and dementia gardens fall out of use
once the initial novelty of a new space had worn off, this is clearly not what
was intended nor environmentally sustainable.
They set out to answer the deceptively simple question of 'what makes
care gardens actively used' and their findings shocked and challenged them; here
they share their own journey and through many inspiring case studies show how
this can be applied by others working in this field.
The authors' research identified a correlation between care homes
practicing more advanced, person-centred, care with greater engagement outside.
This handbook guides the reader through a range of stages to better support Care
Settings, and other organisation's, by applying a 'Relationship-Centred
Design' approach to design delivery. This ensures the organisational
culture is understood and incorporated into all stages of a design's process
ensuring a garden is used long after the designer has left.
The handbook provides a detailed yet practical and easy to use tool to identify
the current organisational 'care culture' influencing engagement by providing a
range of simple questions to ask, areas to validate or investigate and then recommends
the most beneficial support to provide.
Real-life stories illuminate this thought-provoking book bringing to
life how to ensure gardens are meaningfully developed and used, and with
particular reference to people living with dementia. It guides the reader into the
impact of the wider care organisation's practices, the people supporting those
who live there, and how, and even if, they enable the garden to be used by
residents. This book should be in the toolbox for all garden designers working
with care, or other institutional, settings providing guidance from the first
contact with a client right through to implementation of the most appropriate
support that may be required. This may not be what is traditionally
expected.
A wider range of care related design insights are also explored
including several hidden dangers where designers can inadvertently introduce
new obstacles to engagement, avoiding adding gimmicks, along with some quick
wins.
Finally, there is a 'call to action' for more research, in this under
investigated field, on areas where conflicts exist between current garden
design guidance and observed positive, yet contradictory, practices. The
authors' aim with this book is to support the continuing development of best
practices for Garden Designers that is aligned with, and supportive of, the
care sectors requirement to deliver person-centred care.
This handbook compliments the earlier published 'Care Culture Map and
Handbook' which supports care settings on a culture change journey to improved
care practices and greater engagement outside and is part of the 'Why don't
we go into the garden?' series of books and tools. The two publications
support the necessary changes in practices to both parties, carers and
designer, in creating a new garden with greatest likelihood of it being
actively used for the long term benefiting the residents who live there and
ensuring wise investment too.
Table of Contents:
What this Handbook aims to do
Why should care culture matter to designers?
Our research project
What is 'care culture'?
What's this got to do with design?
Our research findings
What do we mean by 'advanced care culture practices'?
The Care Culture Map
The care setting's culture change journey
'Hidden dangers'
We too may need to undertake a culture change journey
Hidden danger no.1 Holding the care setting back
It's about balancing risk, not necessarily reducing it
Hidden danger no.2 Over-designing
Hidden danger no.3 The designer's and care setting's fearful attitudes match
Hidden danger no.4 The care setting devolves responsibility for the outdoors to an expert
Examine your deeply held beliefs about 'good' design
Relationship-Centred Design
The key principles of Relationship-Centred Design
What do we mean by 'non-drawing' design approaches?
Five scenarios
Conversation starter
Five key questions
Relationship-Centred Design (RCD) v. Traditional design approaches
The Care Culture Banding Tool
Identifying the correct care culture band
How to use the Care Culture Banding Tool
The Seven Care Culture Bands
More design insights
Room layouts and sightlines
Territoriality
Beware the gimmicks, gizmos and gadgets
Our checklist
Safety and security are not the same thing
Garden paths, routes and layouts
Heights and distance travelled in the care setting garden
New build and re-development projects
We never stop learning
About the Authors / Contact details
Index
Index
Other products in this series
Authors' acknowledgements
About the Author :
Debbie Carroll and Mark Rendell are both Garden Designers who teamed up to find the answer to a deceptively simple question they had "Why aren't care gardens more actively used?" This is the subject of their series of books and tools in the 'Why don't we go into the garden?' series. Their research project grew to be one of the largest of its kind in the UK and took them into new territory (for garden designers) deep inside care settings. During this process, they drew on many diverse and complementary skills from their earlier careers to form a unique collaboration that enabled them to articulate creatively and sensitively their often challenging findings, and what this means for both designers and carers. They founded Step Change Design to share their findings and promote their new design approach, 'Relationship-Centred Design', with both the care and design sectors.
Debbie Carroll is an Accredited Garden Designer with the British Association of Landscape Industries based in Southern England. She has 20 years' experience through her design business, Debbie Carroll Garden Designs, and has a passion for creating gardens that are well used and well loved, whether within a domestic or care setting. Her experiences designing dementia care home gardens was a major influence on the research project that followed. While her background in the Armed Forces, and a Retail Manager within John Lewis Partnership, honed her people development skills it was her inquiring mind, and tenacity to implement changes to create improvements both at an individual and organisational level that adds a depth to the insights shared in this book. Debbie continues to run Step Change Design into its 2nd decade sharing their research through this book within a wide range of workshops, webinars and other speaking opportunities.
Mark Rendell is a project manager, coach, gardener and garden designer based in North Wales. He set up 'The Growing Company' in 2000, primarily to raise awareness of the importance of the outdoors in aiding healing, recovery and respite in health and care settings. With a background in Health (he worked in the NHS on HIV/AIDS related issues in the 90s) and in Environmental Projects (he set up the UK's telephone directory recycling schemes on behalf of BT and Yellow Pages in 1998), he is also a trainer and project manager specialising in behaviour change, team dynamics and project management. Mark left Step Change Design in December 2021 after writing the Designer Handbook with Debbie in order to pursue his many other projects, consolidate his diverse work experiences and to (finally) complete the renovation of his 200 year old property in Snowdonia.
Review :
"It's ground breaking insightful work. You have really understood the complexity and realities of the sector and broken this down into a digestible and useful format for best practice and a ladder for implementing change. Truly amazing!" Landscape Architect & Consultant to Hallmark Care Homes UK.
"Recommended title, added to the reading list for London College of Garden Design students" Andrew Fisher-Tomlin, Director LCGD and Garden Designer;
"I LOVE your books! Arrived last week and I am learning so much- and
learning how I, as an eco gerontologist, can apply the knowledge and
research your share- so much information. Also, I appreciate the
presentation- easy to digest and the Care Culture Map is awesome! Thank
You!!!" Monica Eastway, M.S. Eco Gerontologist, USA
Garuth Chalfont, Garden Designer, researcher and author 'Design for Nature in Dementia Care' book inspired the authors study and had to say of this book "Functionally, this handbook is a perfect size, usefully ring-bound with nice paper weights and finishes, eye-popping colours, fonts and layouts, photos and diagrams. These brave new concepts and ideas are organised and presented just as finely on the printed page as they are formulated, proposed and argued pragmatically (sensible, realistic), and likewise reach the height of effective discourse: thoughtful, ethical and humane. Many times, your examples and stories jumped off the page... You dared to lift the skirt of care culture which needed desperately to be exposed as the underlying driver of all possible and actual outdoor experiences for residents, families and indeed staff themselves.... You called this out. But you went further once the veil had been lifted, and you returned the gaze back onto your own professional practice. It is no exaggeration to say you have birthed a movement. The hatchling has been pecking its way out since your article in the Journal for Dementia Care in 2015, followed by the first Care Culture Map a year later. This Designer Handbook introducing Relationship-Centred Design evidences the fully-fledged falcon rising to heights which give us finally a bird's eye view of both the short-comings and solutions to the dementia care home [gardens]. The brilliantly conceived and masterfully presented Banding Tool nails it - especially its Questions to ask, Points to consider and Suggestions for support. And to do this for fully seven bands is insightful and research-rich beyond words. .... Suffice it to say that this self-funded research endeavour of yours stands superior to any government funded university research project I've ever witnessed over the 15 years I spent within ... academia....How refreshing to hear connection to nature equated to advanced care culture!"
