Culture change is a process and movement of transforming traditional, institutional long-term care facilities, into true homes. It involves a change of environment, systems and attitude. It’s not just a change you can see, it’s a change you feel; a change elders feel as they direct their own lives and staff feel as they are empowered to help them do so.

Nursing homes are changing into personal communities households and neighborhoods, staffed by familiar caregivers who are there to assist residents as they live lives of meaning, value and joy. They have private spaces and family places and a chance to continue to live life with some measure of independence and responsibility. Led by human compassion and economic foresight, facilities are applying historically successful, common sense approaches to living and caring for elders. The result: long-term care communities where elders choose to live their lives with staff who enjoy assisting them.

These communities provide the best personal, health and medical services any community member, however frail, will need. Some have gone as far as giving each their own homey kitchen, dining room and living room, where staff and elders prepare and eat meals together. Each day is informal, like a day in our own homes, and results in a truly rewarding and satisfying daily life for elders and staff alike. It’s not home-like, it’s home.

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In the Household Model, long-term care homes adopt a person-centered approach that shapes the physical environment, organizational structure, and interpersonal relationships in ways that create an atmosphere of genuine home, while providing elders with clear opportunities to direct their own lives.

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