Making Music in Melbourne!

Making music in Melbourne 

by Jenny Garratt

Having just left Melbourne, it is safe to say that I have had yet another interesting week. However, before I regale you with stories from my visits, I first want to tackle a bigger issue. I feel that I have been conned. When I was planning for this trip, although I knew it would be winter in Australia, I was not prepared for lows of 2 degrees. Safe to say that my packing reflected my assumptions that the whole of the country would still be relatively warm no matter what the season. Luckily I have one pair of boots with me and a few hoodies, so I’ve survived! Now back to my adventures… This week has been split into two main visits to Emmy Monash Aged Care and the MAC.ART project. Emmy Monash is a Jewish aged care provider who cater for people with varying needs, from independent living to dementia care (they call their dementia wing ‘memory support’), and offer a range of creative and artistic initiatives.

I also want to quickly highlight another terminology difference. In Australia services for older people are divided into ‘high care’ and ‘low care’. Individuals assessed as requiring ‘high care’ need a lot of assistance with daily living activities, whereas those assessed as ‘low care’ usually need a lot less help. I spent my time at Emmy Monash under the guidance of Pamela Bruder, their Lifestyle and Life Enrichment Program Coordinator, who whisked me around the complex to observe a variety of activities including:

• Painting session in high care. What I particularly liked about this session was that the ‘painting of the week’ is framed and put on the wall. Staff stated that residents exhibit a lot of pride when chosen and feelings of satisfaction are evident.
• Creative word session. A member of staff initiates conversation through the use of a photograph and a story is developed around it. As residents talk, quotes are written down and repeated back to the group throughout the activity.
• Meaningful activity for individuals in need of memory support (based on Montessori methods). Residents are encouraged to participate in regular, day to day activities including making sandwiches and folding laundry.
• Resident skype with a local school to talk about the play they are developing as a joint venture. This is a year-long project and will include a performance at the end, which some of the residents will act in.
• Painting session in low care. Relaxation music, which is used in many activities, set the tone of the session and helped relax residents. Each resident who regularly participates in artistic activities has their own folder where their work is kept and added to each session.
• Choir with a mixture of high and low care, including residents from the memory support wing. I was extremely impressed by the diversity of languages, hearing songs in English, Yiddish, Hebrew and Russian in just one session. A focus on maintaining and preserving Jewish identity is a theme seen throughout many activities and heavily linked to emotion and memory for many residents.

Bearing in mind that I was only there for two days, the frequency of activities should be obvious! They are all part of a wider initiative developed by Pamela; the organisation’s award-winning Life Enrichment Project that uses a variety of creative and expressive arts-based activities. She also talked me through some of their projects that had already been completed, of which I will share one with you that I found particularly inspirational. ‘Footsteps to Friendships, Pathways to Peace’ was an inter-generational art collaboration between Emmy Monash residents and students from a local primary school and the groups worked together, mostly in pairs, to produce artwork that explored the theme of migration and resettlement. Many of the residents in Emmy Monash are holocaust survivors and the majority of students who participated in the project were refugees and immigrants, some of whom were also chosen as they were having trouble concentrating at school. The connections made between the two groups made a significant impact on both residents and students, with many of the friendships still being maintained today.

 When I asked Pamela what she thought were the most important factors behind the quality of initiatives offered the residents, she said that the support of the board of directors and CEO were integral in upholding the organisations philosophy, which is based on promoting innovation and continuous improvement. This focus on leadership was a theme also touched upon by my second visit of the week, to Dr. Julie Gross McAdam. Julie’s programme is called the McAdam Aged Care Art Recreation Therapy program (MAC.ART) and is designed to be an all facility project that includes residents, family members and care workers. Our first stop on Thursday was at the Alzheimer’s Australia office, where we met Phoebe Lindsay who is currently working on a number of new projects. These include a new dementia training experience, a simulated program that allows people to experience what it might be like to have dementia and promotes dementia friendly environments, and the Forest Project, a projected experience for people with dementia that allows them to interact with a virtual natural world. Alongside these new innovations in technology, the organisation also offers a wide range of training courses.

For the next few days we visited various homes around the Melbourne area in which MAC.ART projects had been completed. My personal favourite was the Nixon Hostel, a City of Kingston Council dementia care home. Here we were shown around by Colette Baya, Lifestyle Coordinator, who was an absolute delight. The whole home was just, well, ‘homely’ for want of a better word and when entering you would have no clue that every resident there had some form of dementia. For me, this is an excellent indicator of an environment that has great care. Colette uses a mixture of different approaches, including Montessori methods and Tom Kitwood’s petals, and has been trained in the Spark of Life philosophy that I talked about in my last blog. She also let me in on a little secret, what she called her bible, which is a book called ‘The Best Friends Approach to Alzheimer’s Care’ (Virginia Bell and David Troxel). I hadn't heard of this and it will definitely be on my reading list when I get home!

Spending time at Nixon Hostel really hit home the importance of making the most out of your resources. As a council funded home, budgets are tight but this does not mean that truly person centred care cannot be achieved. Staff are encouraged to be involved in all activities and include residents in as many everyday tasks as possible. Colette is always on site and mentors team members who need guidance. She also says that having backing from the manager, who is very supportive, has enabled her to have the freedom to do things differently. Colette, for me, optimised this not just in her words but also in her actions. Let me give you just one example… Colette has chickens at home and every day one of the residents cuts up the scraps left over from dinner into little pieces for Colette to take home and feed to them. In return, Colette cooks a boiled egg at home every Friday morning and brings it in, wrapped up and warm, for the resident to have with her breakfast. Such a simple act and yet it represents so many key qualities of excellent person centred care; meaningful activity, individuality and positive relationships to name but a few.

This week has been extremely interesting and I particularly enjoyed meeting so many residents that have directly benefited from artistic and creative services. Seeing the end result is extremely motivating and I can’t wait to find out what my next visits will teach me in Sydney. So enough for now and talk to you soon!