A favourite chair. Photographs on the wall. The dog waiting by the door. Home is made up of things we can see and things we cannot: familiar faces, private rituals, the freedom to decide who comes in and how we spend our time.
When someone needs more care than can be safely provided at home, leaving home behind can be one of the hardest parts of the decision. For a son, daughter or partner, there is relief in knowing help will be there around the clock for their loved one, alongside a difficult question: will the person they love still feel at home?
That question deserves more than a reassuring brochure. University of Otago researcher Dr M. Panthi interviewed older New Zealanders living in residential care and found that unfamiliar surroundings, set routines and fewer visits could make the early weeks lonely. Some residents felt the decision to move had been made for them. Others gradually came to regard their new surroundings as “like home”, helped by relationships with staff and family and by activities that meant something to them.
The findings point to a distinction that matters. A room can be comfortable and well-furnished yet still feel like somebody else’s place if every decision is made elsewhere. Moving from a family house to a smaller single room is a dramatic physical change. Losing a sense of ownership over your days, your relationships or your surroundings is something deeper.
Families feel that uncertainty too. They may worry whether Mum’s stories and preferences will be known, whether Dad will have someone to talk to, or whether visits will feel welcome. Handing over responsibility for care does not mean wanting to hand over a loved one’s place in the family.
At Enliven Central, our starting point is simple: it is the resident’s home. Our team are guests in their home. That means making room for the life someone brings with them: photographs, treasured possessions, the chair they have always sat in. Where suitable and approved, that may include a much-loved pet. These things carry memories, habits and relationships into an unfamiliar place.
But feeling at home takes more than filling a room with familiar things. It means being able to welcome family and friends in your place, find companionship and have a say in what happens beyond your own door. Enliven Central’s approach is guided by the Eden Alternative, a philosophy that addresses key issues like loneliness, helplessness and boredom by making connection and meaningful participation part of everyday life.
For families, that welcome matters too. One spouse describes looking for “a homely place, something that suited our lifestyle” and finding that the family quickly got to know the staff. Hamish, whose wife Rosalie lives at an Enliven Central Home, says the friendliness of the team has made visits feel “like another home for me too, in a way”.
Those experiences speak to something families hope for: that their relationship with the person moving into care will still have a place there. So does the resident’s relationship with the people providing the care and support.
That’s what happens at Enliven Central when a new Home Manager is being recruited. Our Residents take part in the interviews. They sit across from the candidates, ask questions and help assess who is right to lead the place where they live.
Huntleigh Home resident Valerie Smith relishes that opportunity. She asks candidates whether they have worked in an environment where residents have “maximum choice and control over decisions about their daily lives and about how the Home is run”.
It is a demanding question. A Home Manager will make decisions that shape the atmosphere of the home and how concerns are heard. Valerie gets to look a prospective manager in the eye and ask how they will treat residents when those decisions arise. Her experience of living there counts in choosing who will lead it.
Anna Pardillo, Home Manager at Huntleigh Home and Village, puts the responsibility in human terms. Alongside physical care, she says, residents have emotional and social needs: “to belong, to be in the community, to be in a family.”
Care and belonging belong together. A family should be able to feel confident that their loved one is supported, and the person moving in should be able to recognise their own life in the place around them. That takes more than furniture and friendly words. It takes listening, making space for whānau and trusting residents with a real say in the home they share.
A move into care can change an address. In our view, it should not erase a person’s history, relationships or place in the decisions that shape their days. At Enliven Central, that is what we mean when we say it is ‘their home’ and serving residents is our privilege.