Wellbeing and involvement as guides for the development of quality in residential and nursing homes. Development of an instrument for self-evaluation.

The last 30 years CEGO has built up expertise with regard to the assessment and improvement of quality in a wide range of settings (education, child care, science centres, etc...). The conceptual framework at the basis of this work is guided by the experiential approach. How children and adults experience the world they are part of, is taken as the point of departure. As more and more people plea for a change in the treatment of persons in the care for elderly and want to see more initiatives to improve quality there is a need for tools to support residential and nursing homes to monitor the quality of provision taking the experiences of the inhabitants as point of reference. The aim of this action research, is the development of such a tool. It has to provide a guide for heads of settings and their teams to assess the levels of wellbeing and involvement in the residents of their homes. Both indicators at the process level, are regarded as touchstones for the quality of provision. Wellbeing refers to the satisfaction of basic needs and involvement to the amount and intensity of mental activity. Further, the instrument will contain tools to identify the strength of the actual approach and the possible entrances for interventions to promote wellbeing and involvement. This self-evaluation instrument offers the area of care of elderly an integrated set of materials allowing them to develop step by step more quality of life in both the elderly and the teams taking care of them. This will form the basis for modules to support the dissemination of the acquired expertise.

Keywords:Wellbeing, Quality assessment and improvement, Homes for elderly

Disciplines:Social work, Other sociology and anthropology