Rantakartano Service Center
Rantakartano Service Center delivers social and health care services in town of Oulainen.
1)Home help ( personnel 25): the services are delivered for old people at home. The maximum number of home visits for a client is 4 timesa day
2)Home care ( personnel 5): professional nursing care at home
3)Day care center for the elderly ( personnel 2): activities and care for old people who are living at home. About 10 old people visit in Day Care Center three times a week.
4)Service home for the elderly ( 38 residents)
5)Nursing home for the elderly ( 24 residents)
6)Central kitchen ( personnel 6): meals for all units + meals on wheels for 100 old people who live at home
Rantakartano Service Center also have a group home for mentally disabled people.
Home Help
Philosophy
Home help gives different kind of services to support the independence living of an old person. Home help includes also meal services. Old people are not the only client group for home help. Services are also delivered for mentally disabled, alcohol and drug addicted and mentally disordered people as well as for families with small children. The aim is to help these people to cope with the everyday living in the changing life situations. When the sense of control in life is disturbed or lost many kind of support is needed to get back on balance in one’s life. Home help services are aiming to help a client to achieve again the sense of control in their life.
Home Care
Philosophy
Home care delivers professional nursing care at home. The care is provided for client as well as for the relatives or significant others for example in wound or drug management and in supervision and counseling of self- care. The nurses working in home care co-operate very closely with the personnel of home help.
Day Care Center
Day care center has been in Oulainen since year 1986. The old people who visit in day care center live by themselves or with families. The old people have told that reason why they come to day care center is that they come to find company.The day care center gives them social contacts and activities The old people are transported to day care center by taxi. In the day care center offers breakfast, lunch and day-coffee or tea. The other services available in day care center are sauna, massage, hair dresser and podiatry. During the days is also organized program, like sinning, physical activities and visits of parish workers.
The day care center also creates positive attitude toward service and nursing home. When an old person’s situations has changed and the living at home is no more possible the moving from home to service or nursing home is then easier for those old people who have been in day care center.
Philosophy
An old person can visit to day care center as many times in week as needed. The aim is to promote and support the well-being of an old person so that he/she can live at home as long as possible. The care and services are planned according the individual needs and wishes of an old person. The day car center offers daily activities, social security and nursing care as well as holistic rehabilitation services. The personnel working in the day care center offers for old people the attention, care and help they need.
The qualitative and functional aims of care :
1)self-determination
2)individuality
3)safety
4)promote and support for old person’s functionality and activity
Service home for the elderly
Philosophy
The residents in the service home are old pepple, who need help in daily activities. The residents pay a rent of their flat and beside this buy the services they need and want. The services are for example meals, laundry, cleaning work. The residents can also get help from nursing home in the emergency situations, like falling down or can not get up from the bed etc. The aim of the service home is to support an old person’s resources and strengths that enable his/her independency in daily activities.
Nursing home for the elderly
Philosophy:
The day care and interval care support old person’s living at home as long as possible. But when the situation changes so that an old person needs a lot of care and support to be able to cope at home or in service house the nursing home is the best care place for him/her to live. The aim of the care in nursing home is the well-being of an old person. This is supported by individually planned care based on the needs, expectations and wishes of an old person and his/her relatives as well as creating home like environment for living. The care includes continuing co-operation and collaboration with an old person,relatives or significant others and with all service and care providers.
The aim is the best of an old person.
The qualitative and functional aims of care :
1)self-determination
2)home-like environment
3)safety
4)promote and support an old person’s functionality and activity
Nursing home offers also interval care, which aims to support an old person’s possibility to live at home as long as possible. One person can be in interval care period maximum for two weeks. The interval care also support the well-being of caregivers by giving them an opportunity to rest for a while.
Central Kitchen
Central kitchen is an own unit as well as nursing home, home care and home help. It delivers meals for all other units of Rantakartano presented earlier. Beside this central kitchen also ” meals on wheels” service to those old people who are living at home.
Rantakartano Service Center is multidimensional and multiprofessional unit, which aims to serve clients according their needs. The center co-operates also with other organisations that deliver social and health care services. For example while an old person is discharged from local hospital or from the ward of health care center the continuing of care is planned together with a patient, relatives, and a professional from home care and home help.
Future visions
At the moment we recognize that we are living in changing situation. The demands for the staff will change according the changing needs and expectations of clients, which can be listed in five main points: 1) the better facilities and more help for old people who live at home, 2) the skills and competence to care very old and very sick people at home, including the care of dementia patients 3) the individually planed and very high quality of care for the clients, who will pay for their care 4) support for caregivers as they already are important partners and in the future they will be even more important partners in care teams.
For the better care of the older people in town of Oulainen is needed service homes for the elderly. Also the home help service would need more staff to be able to meet the needs of their clients. At the moment home help have about 60 regular clients, who need care 1-4 times / day. Home help services clients every day from the morning at 7.00 o’clock to 22.00 in the evening.
The workload has increased, because the clients need more help. The facilities for the care are good in service and nursing homes, while the help aids are available. But at client’s home the situation is different. The rooms can be very small and the help devices are not available. The care among the old people is physically as well psychologically hard. The counseling has been available for the staff. The rooms for service home are built more so that in autumn 2002 there is eight new flat available for the old people.
The average age of residents in Rantakartano is 84,6 years. In Home help most of the clients belongs to age group 75-84 years and some of then are even older. The trend is that we shall have older and older clients, who are very sick old and still want to live at home. The an other increasing client group among the older people will be dementia patients. Also the people in younger age groups develop dementia, which sets demands especially for service homes and home help. In the future thee interval care need to be developed further, maybe the hospital at home will be the future possibility in the care of the elderly.
The care and support of relatives as caregivers is also a big challenge for the future care of elderly. The caregivers have already now a very important role in the care of older people. Even in Oulainen ( 8ooo inhabitants) we have 50 registered caregivers, who take care of a very sick or other wise a lot of support needing relative ( often spouse) at home and have very minimum financial support of their work. Beside this there is very many relatives who care old spouse, mother, farther or mother and farther in law at home without any kind of support.
Twice a year Rantakartano Service Center arranges afternoon program for caregivers so that they can rest and meet other caregivers. The participation to the day is free of costs. Beside this the home help director and the director of elderly care visits to old people and then usually the relative who takes care of an old person is with.
We also think that in the future the older people are more aware of their rights. They do want a good quality of care. They want to live at home and they are willing to pay of their care, but they also want to choose the best available care. This challenges the skills of workers and it might even become a problem to find workers for care of the elderly.
In the future the challenges in the care of elderly are to develop staff skills in technology and multiprofessional team and project working. During the recent 10 years we have been participating in four projects, of which the last one “ LUOVA” is still going on. The project LUOVA aims to support the staff’s working capacity and well-being. It is funded by ministry of labour. At the moment an other interesting developmental task is the process in which we develop measurements of the old person’s functionality to aiming that these measurements will enable to do better need assessment and could promote the continuing of care between hospital and community.
The multiprofessional team working is the key while the care of the elderly is developed further. Also the skills and competences of the professionals and non professionals has to be clarified. The number of people working in the elderly care need also to be increased. We hope that the value of the care of older people will be in the future seen also in wages.