Jacaranda Village

Jacaranda Village in Red Cliffs prides itself on ensuring excellence in aged care – to provide a life worth living for our elders. We continue to focus our energy on the promotion of positive living for our elders who live with us at Jacaranda Village. The positive living approach is inspired by the principles of the Eden Alternative (http://www.edeninoznz.com.au) This philosophy of care is based on addressing the issues of loneliness, boredom, and helplessness that older people are at risk of experiencing in residential aged care. Positive living means that there is a priority on creating opportunities to be involved in a broad range of events that are similar to those the elders would have participated in, in the community.
To counter loneliness – it is important to provide loving companionship. To counter boredom – it is important to provide experiences that offer variety and spontaneity and to counter helplessness – it is important to enable the elders to give as well as receive care. To enable this to occur, the emphasis is on interactions between animals, plants and children. Meaningless “activities” to fill a space in the day erodes the human spirit.

We also seek the support of the community to assist us in this process. Staff at Jacaranda can provide the day to day care but it is the community that can reduce the loneliness, boredom, and helplessness – the social isolation felt by our elders.