Places to Flourish: A Pattern Based Approach to Foster Change in Residential Care

There is an urgent need to bring new ideas into the culture and design of residential care for older people in Ireland in order to meet the rights and expectations of our ageing population and their families. Creating a person-centred and client-empowered culture, supported by facilities appropriate to the needs of current and future generations of older people requires setting aside older institutional ‘command and control’ approaches to make space to shape a more desirable place in which everyone can flourish. To achieve smooth holistic change while working through smaller incremental and piecemeal steps and sequencing, action needs to be couched within a programme of continuous quality improvement in a way that is resilient to internal and external pressures and which is economically sustainable.