Thoughts on seating around the walls of care home sitting rooms.

[jaymor]

I have noticed on several posts, when talking of looking around care homes that seating around the walls seems at times to be a minus point.

My thoughts - In a residential home groups of chairs around a small table creates a cosy place to chat and have a cuppa.

In care homes for residents with mobility problems maybe not ideal. My husband is in a nursing home and the chairs are around the walls. There are nine men on his floor and just one other resident and my husband are of normal mobility. Two in wheelchairs, one wheeled in and out in his own special armchair, two who use walking aids and two who walk but only whilst aided by two members of staff. The room needs to be clear. The room is large but not too wide so conversation is possible with someone sitting across the room. There is a table and chairs in the room. Not such a cosy feel but necessary for the safety of the residents.

There is a conservatory on the ground floor and that is set out nicely but not that practical and someone is always moving a chair or table to get a wheelchair through or someone using a walking frame.

Just looked around my sitting room and all my furniture is around the walls. Never thought about it before. Think there may be a bit of furniture shuffling going on today. Bet it all ends up back where it started.

What are your thoughts?

Jay

 

[PeggySmith]

Hi Jay,

We've just been round 3 homes and had "chairs round walls = bad" firmly fixed in our heads. It only really applied in one home which had a ginormous sitting room. The home we've picked is quite small and the sitting room is just a bit bigger than mine (bog standard 1930s semi) so people can sit round the edge of the room and still chat to each other.

I think, in the end, it's one of those things to tuck away in the back of your mind, rather than being a major issue.

 

[Witzend]

I have noticed on several posts, when talking of looking around care homes that seating around the walls seems at times to be a minus point.

My thoughts - In a residential home groups of chairs around a small table creates a cosy place to chat and have a cuppa.

In care homes for residents with mobility problems maybe not ideal. My husband is in a nursing home and the chairs are around the walls. There are nine men on his floor and just one other resident and my husband are of normal mobility. Two in wheelchairs, one wheeled in and out in his own special armchair, two who use walking aids and two who walk but only whilst aided by two members of staff. The room needs to be clear. The room is large but not too wide so conversation is possible with someone sitting across the room. There is a table and chairs in the room. Not such a cosy feel but necessary for the safety of the residents.

There is a conservatory on the ground floor and that is set out nicely but not that practical and someone is always moving a chair or table to get a wheelchair through or someone using a walking frame.

Just looked around my sitting room and all my furniture is around the walls. Never thought about it before. Think there may be a bit of furniture shuffling going on today. Bet it all ends up back where it started.

What are your thoughts?

Jay

I think it can look offputting, seeing chairs along walls, but I guess there's the issue of practicality, people with walking frames, wheelchairs, etc.

My mother's CH is purpose built, 4 connected colour-coded sections of 9 each, all with their own open plan kitchen/dining room/sitting room, sort of L shaped. So there is a chair-lined bit, but in the adjacent space are maybe 4 round tables with chairs, too. IMO it is extremely well designed - nobody's room is far away and the corridors are nice and wide. Plus it's designed for circular walks for the 'pacers' - they can go round and round without getting lost.

 

[Grannie G]

The furniture in Dhiren`s home is round the walls .

It is a `real` sitting room in an old house so there is no scope for anything else. Residents with walking frames have enough problems navigating their frames around the frames and feet of other residents.
There is just enough room to make sure there is a small table between each chair and there is a coffee table in front of the unused fireplace containing a bowl of fruit and jugs of juice.

The first home my mother was in had an enormous lounge with the TV on at one end and a CD player on at the other end. It was awful even though it was beautiful in appearance. The chairs were arranged in 2 semi circles.

The second home she was in had several small sitting rooms and was much cosier. Hers led onto a rooftop walled and covered garden area.

 

[tre]

My home also has the furniture all around the edges as my husband who has dementia has lost most of his sight as a result of this and it is much safer.

When my mum was in the CH they not only had chairs around the edge of one of the lounges but also along one of the corridors, as well as a second lounge where the chairs were grouped for conversation. The most popular chairs, which were always occupied first, were those lined along the corridor as the residents liked these as there were people going past all the time and they preferred to interact with real people than the TV in the lounge. The home said they had thought it looked bad and tried to move the corridor chairs but this upset the residents and resulted in some of them trying to drag the chairs back to the corridor. The CH then accepted the residents liked the corridor and got a CD player for that area so they could listen to music there.

Tre

 

[sussexsue]

Mixed thoughts. This topic was raised on a Caring with Confidence course I went on. The chap running it made this point. If you go into an empty room, say a restaurant, do you go for a side table/chair or one on the edge. Without exception we all baulked at the idea of plonking ourselves down in the middle. So I guess the same applies in a care home. Another point he raised, which I have found to be true, is that people with AD have very little sense, if any, of what is going on behind them, so being at the edge of a room makes sense. Where mum was they mostly had smaller lounges/conservatories with armchairs and sofas around the edge. In the bigger dementia unit lounge they had it partitioned off with low bookcases into three smaller clusters, but again the chairs were around the edge of these clusters.