People living with dementia need flexible care to maximise their independence, enabling them to respond to their changing needs at different points in time. At present, care is either limited at home or all-encompassing in an establishment. CASCADE is the abbreviation of Community Areas of Sustainable Care And Dementia Excellence in Europe. The CASCADE model aims to provide the means for people living with dementia to remain integrated within the community, living the life that they wish with the support they want. The model creates a “home” for the residents and the approach to staffing reflects this. The CASCADE model offers a financially sustainable approach for people living with dementia that can be replicated across Europe. It pursues a strengths based approach to holistic person centred care to maximise independence and quality of life in the community. Technological solutions are utilised to support people to be as independent as possible and new facilities allow for the exploration of a tourism offer to a currently excluded group.
Co-creation is a key enabler of the CASCADE model and ensures that it can be tailored to local cultural demands and financial and infrastructural constraints. It also creates a culture where questions are encouraged and solutions sought together. The CASCADE model was developed as part of a funded Interreg 2 Seas project.
The aim of this manual is to inspire people who work with people with dementia to maximise independence and quality of life for people living with dementia.
The manual starts with the development of the CASCADE model, which started in June 2017 with a visit to ZorgSaam in Terneuzen (the Netherlands) and a visit to Emmaus elderly care (Belgium) in September 2017. The development of the model is still ongoing and will continue due to changes and developments in society. The CASCADE model consist of five fundaments that represents the vision of the model. These fundaments are described in the second chapter. To translate the fundaments into actual practice there are six components of the model, these are described in the third chapter. The fourth chapter describes the location of the four delivery sites who are rolling out the model. The implementation of the model is not without challenges. Every partner, from different countries and different practices, has encountered challenges to put the model into practice. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, some things have also been approached differently than initially thought, or things have been delayed because the restrictions did not allow to further roll out actions. The last chapter lists some tools that an organisation can use to implement a CASCADE-based facility.