Abstract
In this chapter the authors investigate home-making practices for people with dementia in residential care that make use of objects or material environments. Many of these objects or environments have aspects of make-believe. Responding to concerns raised about the growing use of these objects as ‘environmental lies’ or mere ‘façade’ building, the authors discuss what truthful home making could mean. They distinguish two ways of being truthful, connected with two strategies of using objects. In the first strategy, called home-scaping, care tries to closely copy the formerly lived environments of residents. Truth in this case means correspondence with realities as lived outside residential care. The second strategy, home-playing, aims at attuning to residents and to newly emerging truths, here and now, in mutual play. The authors argue that, while both strategies have their value, home-scaping can and must learn from home-playing where it needs to be embedded in ongoing care practices.
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Notes
- 1.
Quotations unaccompanied by a reference are derived from our fieldnotes. For reasons of privacy, we have used pseudonyms for personal names of caregivers and people with dementia. Translations of the original Dutch into English are our own.
- 2.
When quoting from this and other Dutch (print and online) sources, translations into English are ours.
- 3.
This observation figures as positive evidence in an explorative study by Voorhaar, van Asch and Willemse (2015). The problematic nature of the use we suggest here seems to be confirmed by the fact that the quote is no longer displayed on the True Doors website (True Doors n.d.: One-hundred stories) where it was when consulted on 21 June 2018.
- 4.
As part of the audience of a theatre performance, for instance, one learns to see whether what is brought on stage is honest, whether fictional characters are real, whether an actor has a credible presence or not. This ability does not get lost in dementia (Hendriks 2012: 464).
- 5.
For some examples, see Njiokiktjien and Weeda (2019).
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Kamphof, I., Hendriks, R. (2020). Beyond Façade: Home Making and Truthfulness in Dementia Care. In: Pasveer, B., Synnes, O., Moser, I. (eds) Ways of Home Making in Care for Later Life. Health, Technology and Society. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-0406-8_13
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