Spark of Life Model of Care in Practice and in Action

By Mischeal McCormick
Owner of Adriel House and Adriel Rest Home
Two Spark of Life Centres of Excellence
Amberley, New Zealand

People often ask- what does the Spark of Life Model of Care look like in practice? At our home it means our residents, who all have dementia, live life to the fullest, their independence is facilitated, and they have active and vibrant involvement in the local community. My team have learned how to meet each person’s emotional needs and encourage activities that are self-initiated by the residents. I’ll share some particular examples of how this is experienced in this article.

In the morning the residents are waiting for the maintenance man. They will ask if he can fix their walking frame. They queue up to take a turn in mowing the lawn. It doesn’t matter if it looks crooked when they have mown it- we can always mow it again.

The residents know what to do, often better than the maintenance person. When they are outside they get their sunshine and vitamin D. When they have done a good day’s work in the garden they feel good and sleep well- they don’t need any medication to help them sleep.

They pick fruit from the fruit trees, and then cut the fruit to make jam. They initiate their own projects outside. Other residents gravitate to join in as they want to be where the action is- they don’t want to be isolated.

We have gentleman who used to have a show garden. He gets up to water the garden, and still does this in winter.

In the afternoon the ladies make sandwiches and talk about how they used to do this for local dances and share recipes.

There is always washing to fold. Our residents help staff fold laundry and it doesn’t matter if it falls on the floor- it can always be washed again, and it can be folded again.

One resident likes meat and potatoes. He has chosen each week to go to the shop, with a staff member, and chooses his own meat. He brings it back and the staff put his name on it in the fridge. Each day the cook in the kitchen will ask him what he’d like from his ‘stash’ of meat. He will make his choice and the cook will make it specially for him. He is under 65.

We enjoy the weather, open spaces in the country, gardens and farms. We take every opportunity to take the residents out to have connections in the community and improve their wellbeing.

We don’t see challenging behaviour- it disappears.

We always have one room for respite care. We had a gentleman on respite who liked running. He went for a run every morning . I asked for volunteers from the staff to run with him. The gentleman was so excited he could go for a run he told his friends in the community at the dementia support group, on his return home how ‘cool’ it was he could run at this facility- as a result we have more people applying to live here. We now have 3 residents who were originally in this community support group.

We don’t use agency staff as our staff choose to remain at Adriel, so we have good staff retention. It is a seamless home with continuity for the residents. I involve staff families and grandchildren, some of who end up working here. I support nursing staff who are training as well.

The auditors are always interested in our Spark of Life Centre of Excellence Recertification Reports, and make a point of reading these. It’s been my experience that this supports our service to achieve excellence, as we have been certified with 4 year Continuous Improvement in audits, the highest recognition for excellence in New Zealand.