Creating home, the older person's perspective within a care home in Edinburgh.

Abstract

Home is a place where people feel safe and where they can be themselves. It is more than the physical building people live in. For many older people who are unable to live at home moving to a care home may be their only option to ensure their safety. Older people move to care homes for a majority of reasons but every older person who moves will experience the loss of their previous residency and have to settle into care home life. Feeling at home in the CH can be a challenging process for the older person to engage with as it requires time and effort. The first part of this project looks to understand the older person's experience from the literature when moving to and living in a care home. The literature presented many factors that influenced an older person's ability to create home, however, this literature review only focuses on four main themes that were identified. The second part of this project, the research proposal, will explore five care home residents perspective's regarding creating home in a care home in Edinburgh and understand how creating home affects their ability to take part in daily activities. Each resident will take part in a sixty-minute interview with the main researcher exploring how they created home. Conducting interviews will allow the researcher to understand each older person's experience in detail. The findings will inform occupational therapists and other health professionals working in care homes how to assist residents to feel at home. It will also inform occupational therapists what factors of creating home affect the older person to take part in daily activities.