Every Monday at the Morsehead Home for Veterans and Aged in Canberra, children and their parents or teachers come together with residents for ‘Intergenerational Playgroup’.
The number of Australians aged 65 and over is projected to more than double in the next 40 years. To that end, there has been a push to coordinate programs that make aged care facilities more stimulating, open places.
The program at Morsehead, initiated by Playgroups Australia in 2015 to help combat isolation and loneliness experienced by the elderly, has been a lighthouse example for similar programs that have since been rolled out around Australia.
“There’s something very spontaneous and intimate about the way young children offer their enthusiasm and unconditional love. What happens with people with dementia is that the present can be confusing and they like to reminisce in the past and when they have conversations with adults, they are constantly trying to re-orient them to the present, whereas the child just wants to play,” says Dr Lyn Phillipson, a Research Fellow at the University of Wollongong specialising in the experience of people living with dementia.
Given that so many families these days depend on a double income, and single-parent households are increasingly common, Dr Phillipson has observed “an increase in the use of formal childcare for much younger children. And what that means is we’re seeing a lot of less natural opportunity for the interactions between generations because there’s fewer people at home.”
See what it’s like at Morsehead:
