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LYSTI Creative Approaches for the Social Welfare and Health care Sector- project

Basic information

Duration: 1 September 2008-31 December 2011

Primary funder: Central Finland Centre for Economic Development, Transport and the Environment (ELY) through the European Social Fund

Primary target group: personnel in participating care facilities, i.e. nursing staff for the elderly and psychiatric patients

Project actors

• JAMK University of Applied Sciences (administrator)
• Central Finland Health Care District, Juurikkaniemi Hospital
• City of Jyväskylä long-term care
• Viitakoti Service Centre
• Telkänpesä Service Centre
• Väinönkatu and Kyllikinkatu Day Centres
• Eino Roiha Foundation (advisory partner)

The primary goal of the project is

• to promote the application of creative approaches in the treatment and rehabilitation of the elderly as well as psychiatric and long-term patients.

The secondary goals are

• to promote creative skills in health care personnel through seminars, training, facility-specific development and work management
• establish operating models as part of routine operations at care facilities
• produce a training and development model in creative approaches for personnel
• develop working methods and service models created for the interface between creative fields and the social welfare and health care sector
• increase business developer and decision-maker knowledge on the opportunities provided by creative fields

More information
Petri Jussila
Project Manager
petri.jussila@jamk.fi
+358405420685

Some innovations of our project

Musical workshop between elderly and children

Developing by
Leena Pantsu
Master of Music,
Senior Lecturer in Music education
JAMK University of Applied Sciences

Musical workshop between elderly and children based on systematic co-operation between elderly care facilities and day nursery of children. First they must aggregate a group which are about ten elderly and about ten children. Then they will organise a few sessions together and meet each other. At the beginning of the process our outsider expert was a strong role but step by step nurses take more responsibility. The nurses in elderly care, especially in dementia care, have successfully included these kind of workshops in their daily work.

Usually workshop takes about 45 minutes. There are a lot of different methods they can use. Both elderly and children can sing or play. There are some memorial elements. They can also used some supporting art methods, for example painting and drama.
Musical workshops has been a positive influence both elderly and children. Children learn more about history and traditions. Elderly people enjoy moments with children and focuses on some memories. These workshops could also be a thematic and integrated for example seasons or feast days. Musical workshops can be therapeutic.

Photo Reminiscence Translation

Developing by
Raija Lundahl
MA in Art Education
Senior Lecturer
JAMK University of Applied Sciences

The nurses in elderly care, especially in dementia care, have successfully included these activities in their daily work. Photos are easy to put into service of reminiscence or phototherapeutic work. Reminiscence and therapeutic life view have many similarities but also differences. Photos return the client back to former situations and feelings of life. Memories of nearby people and relationships with them will quickly return in his or her mind. Those situations and people are also associated with warm and affectionate feelings, but at the same time with wistfulness and sadness.

Reminiscence work focuses mostly on good memories. Its aim is to provide satisfaction, a sense of gratitude and appreciation for one’s achievements in life. Therapeutic work, on the other hand, is focused on more unpleasant memories and it can provide new interpretation on them. The client can notice that he or she has survived through difficult moments and learned something important of those times. Phototherapeutic work helps the client to create more positive mental images instead of traumatic memories and to live in harmony with these facts.

Photo reminiscence with the elderly can simply start on watching or discussing of the photos. The client’s photos and his or her narrative on them is the starting point for reminiscence. His or her life should be seen and heard. The employee can maintain and deepen the examination and conversation by making new questions of memories and meanings. The debate may expand beyond the photographs to the whole life situation and social relationships. Photographs can also be organized according to the life course (life line) and family relationships (family tree).

When the employee has more time and the operational opportunities of the client are sufficient they can work with photo copies and make new compositions of them. These types of collages can reveal new interpretations, memories and feelings of the life stage. The client can tell things to that child, young person or adult he or she once was. How to use photographs and how to work with them depends mostly on the employee’s imagination.

The Dance of Hands – Welfare through dancing among bed patients and nursing stuff

Developing by
Teija Häyrynen
Lisentiate examination
Dancer, Senior Lecture of Human biology and Creative Movement
JAMK University of Applied Sciences

Dance has more and more often moved from the stage among “normal people”. It is called applied or empowering dancing. The nursing stuff expressed their need for creative activity among bed patients and patients who live their terminal phase. I planned The Dance of Hands as a duet for a bed patient and his/her nurse. It can be danced in care house, hospital or at senior’s home.
The aim of the Dance of Hands is to empower and activate the bed patient and offer a new and creative model to nurses for their workday.

The Dance of Hands is a method which is based on contact improvisation, movement therapy and neurophysiology. The interaction between the bed patient and the nurse in an important experience to both partners. The communication is mainly done by the movement. In this case dance means movement, conscious, imagination and feeling.Hands are the starting point of The dance of Hands. Human’s hands are skillful and expressive parts of the body. They are movable, sensible and able to communicate. Hands and brains are an interactive pair: when there are no words, the hands start to speak. Hands activate human brains.

The method of The Dance of Hands includes three parts and it takes 15-20 minutes:
1. Physical and mental worming up. The nurse oils the patient’s hands, gives gentle hand massage and talk to him/her.
2. Dancing. The nurse takes the patient’s hand on his/her own hands and starts to carry and swing them. Swinging goes back and forth, up and down, closing and opening the arms. The
experience gets deeper after repetition of the same movement. Gradually the common feeling leads the dance and the nurse is more and more open to the patient’s impulses. Dancing is accompanied by singing, humming, talking poetry or playing music.
3. Drawing patient’s hands. Finally the nurse can draw the outlines of the patient’s hands on a paper as a memory of the common dance.

I have danced several times with bed patients and patients who are in the terminal phase. My experience is that the patients are full of vitality at the moment of the dance. The nurses said that they have seen smiling faces, joy, activity and they felt that The Dance of Hands enriched their workday.