Tools’ significant role in supportive design

Sarah Waller CBE, RGN, FRSA, who developed and led The King’s Fund’s Enhancing the Healing Environment programme from 2000 to 2015, and is now an associate specialist at the Association for Dementia Studies (ADS) at the University of Worcester, explains how ‘a suite’ of environmental assessment tools – developed by The King’s Fund with health and social care providers to help organisations when prioritising action to develop ‘dementia-friendly’ improvements – is now being taken forward by the ADS.

The need to make the physical environment of health and social care buildings more ‘dementia-friendly’ is widely acknowledged. Hospital stays are recognised to have detrimental effects on people with dementia, yet relatively straightforward and inexpensive aspects of the design and fabric of the care environment can have a considerable impact on their wellbeing. 

The recently published Prime Minister’s challenge on dementia 2020 (Department of Health, 2015);1 Health Building Note 08-02, Dementia-friendly Health and Social Care Environments (Department of Health, 2015),2 and the continuing work by the Dementia Action Alliance to develop a Dementia-Friendly Hospital Charter, all attest to the need to develop more ‘dementia-friendly’ hospitals and care homes.