The Centre’s Healthcare Unit has a Day Centre, a Weekend Family Respite Centre and a Residential Service.
The Day Centre is open from Monday to Friday. Users are collected from their homes by minibus first thing in the morning and driven back home in the afternoon.
At the Centre users are given al the health care they need but also, during the day, the take part in various non-pharmacological therapies which work on the users’ preserved abilities, in order to slow down as much as possible the progress of the disease and to enable them to carry out their everyday activities as self - sufficiently as they can.
We want to emphasize that from the moment patients start attending the Day Centre, we establish a close relationship with their families, as we believe that information is essential to the proper care of patients in the home as well as in the Centre.
Often, attending the Day Centre is a previous step to permanent residence; it is therefore essential to provide stimulation to the patients and try to slow down the disease’s progress so that they can live a home as long as possible and with a good quality of life.
The Day Centre holds a multi-purpose hall, dining room, gym, occupational therapy room, toilets and geriatric bathrooms, resting room and garden.
The Weekend Family Respite Centre provides the same services as the Day Centre, except patients are not collected in their homes but are brought in by private means.
As mentioned before, the Residence can hold 156 patients and is divided into 9 Life Units, where residents are located according to their degree of cognitive impairment, thus allowing for proper care and specific therapies at the disease’s various stages.
- Type I Life Units: three for patients in initial stages and three for patients in the moderate stages of the disease. Each of these units has room for up to 18 residents.
- Type II Life Units: We have three Type II Units, for severely affected patients. Each holds 16 residents at the most, as these patients present serious cognitive and functional limitations and therefore require more care at physical, cognitive and behavioral levels.
Each Life Unit has two double bedrooms and the rest are single bedrooms. They are functional and comfortable and provide everything a patient needs. Besides, they were designed to make the staff’s work easier, each with its own adapted bathroom and a domotics system which is a great help to the Unit’s staff. Each bedroom is equipped with oxygen and vacuum supply systems, so that if patients require these therapeutic measures they can receive them at the Centre, avoiding possible hospitalizations.
By dividing the Residence into small Life Units our residents find themselves in smaller and therefore more familiar spaces, which helps them get their bearings in every way.
Besides, the professional staff, both the direct carers and the multidisciplinary team, can work with patients who are in the same stage of the disease, which results in care and therapy planning specific to that degree of impairment.
Each Life Unit has a control area for geriatric nurses, living room, dining room (with a service area), geriatric bathroom, bedrooms, inner garden and outer terrace.
As well as the inner gardens in each Life Unit, we have a large outer garden with walking paths and therapeutic areas for horticulture, gardening, aromatherapy and mechanotherapy, so important to improve the motor, cognitive and functional abilities of our residents. This garden is also used as a meeting point for relatives and users, as well as having a children’s playground in order to turn these visits into pleasant experiences for them.
Who can become a user of the residence and the day centre of the Queen Sofia Foundation’s Alzheimer Centre?
Persons with Alzheimer’s Disease or other neurodegenerative dementias can become users of the Centre (including the Residence, Day Centre and Weekend Family Respite Centre).
Vacancies are allocated through the Department of Coordination for Care of Dependent Persons of the Madrid Government, as all the Centre’s vacancies are public.
Before admission, candidates are evaluated. For the Day Centre and the Weekend Family Respite Centre, a simple evaluation is performed, to ascertain whether the patient suffers from Alzheimer’s or neurodegenerative dementia. For admission to the Residence this previous evaluation is more extensive, as it not only ensures that the diagnosis is correct, but it also evaluates the cognitive and functional state of the candidates, in order to decide which Life Unit is adequate for their stage. This way, should there be a vacancy in the right Unit, admission could proceed.
Besides, the Residence has beds for partners; that is, if one of a pair of siblings or of a married couple or live-in couple suffers from Alzheimer’s or another neurodegenerative disease, both may live in the Centre and the patient’s companion will be cared for as well, and will be entitled to every service or sociosanitary attention that may be required. With this option, the companion may enjoy sharing life with the patient without the burden of home care and knowing that he or she is also getting professional health care and attention.