This farm just outside Oslo serves as a day care for people with dementia. It helps give them something to care for, too.
Impulssenter is a "care farm" just outside Oslo where people with dementia work and enjoy a social life. It serves as relief for at-home caretakers.
Courtesy Julia Hotz
- People with dementia may need some extra care, but many still want to work and have social lives.
- Henriette Bringsjord's parents started Impulssenter, a farm where they can do just that.
- The farm acts as a sort of day care, providing relief to at-home caretakers.
Henriette Bringsjord grew up on a farm outside Oslo and spent her childhood raising chickens, harvesting eggs, and feeding cows. But 20 years ago, after her parents noticed how hard it was for people with dementia to work a normal job and enjoy a normal social life, they repurposed the farm as a "care farm."
Now, it's called "Impulssenter," a place where people diagnosed with dementia can live and tap into their impulses to work, socialize, and "be a part of life again," Bringsjord, who's since taken over the farm from her parents, said.
Instead of centering their identity on being a person who needs care, her goal is to give the farmers — "caretakers," she calls them — something that they can care for by assigning them simple tasks on the farm and creating an environment where they can enjoy being among nature and each other. While the farm doesn't replace full-time care, it functions as a sort of day care — offering part-time relief to at-home caregivers.
Courtesy Julia Hotz
In 2015, Norway became one of the world's first countries to invest in a national dementia care plan, in which all municipalities are required to offer day care services providing meaningful activities and opportunities to connect with others with dementia, while offering relief from their primary caregivers.
Through the plan, the municipalities have a bidding round, and day care facilities like Impulssenter can apply to receive funding. To receive the funding, the center is required to meet certain housing standards, consent to a biannual check-in, ensure their staff are educated in the basics of dementia care, and have at least one onsite member with health education, Bringsjord said.
Courtesy Julia Hotz
From there, local municipalities handle requests from individuals struggling with dementia, who detail both the kind of care they need and the kind of care they want.
In doing so, the care farm represents an example of social prescribing, a rapidly spreading practice through which health workers shift from focusing on a person's symptoms and shortcomings and asking, "What's the matter with them?" to focusing on their interests and strengths and asking, "What matters to them?"
Bringsjord said the caretakers appreciate the shift. "We hear all the time, 'We come here to work, and it makes us feel normal again,'" she said.
Courtesy Julia Hotz
The farm day begins when Bringsjord's husband picks each of the carers up from their house in his minivan and drives them to the farm. Then, at 10 a.m., the group eats breakfast at a nametag-laden dining room table, and after the caretakers pitch in to help with dishes, they go for a long morning walk. Finally, after another meal, it's time for 90 minutes of work.
Inside the main barn, Bjarne Bøhler, one of the caretakers, proudly showed off the sheep — his "brothers and sisters," he joked — before explaining two of the day's workstations: one for polishing and boxing cartons of eggs and another for cutting up bread to feed to the cows.
Courtesy Julia Hotz
"It's a really nice job because sometimes you need to see what another person is doing to remember how to do it yourself," Bringsjord said. "They kind of help each other." One of the most rewarding parts, she said, is for the caretakers to see the results of their work.
After the barn tour, Bøhler was eager to return to the bread-cutting, which he said is his favorite task. He picked up the serrated knife and slowly sliced the stale loaf into bite-size pieces. But as he did, without prompting, he mentioned what he loves most about the farm. "Before I came here, I was sick," he said. "Now, I have a new life."
Courtesy Julia Hotz
After work, inside for the second coffee break of the day, Marianne Rogstad, another caretaker, cut a piece of cinnamon cake and told her story. Five decades ago, when she finished school, Rogstad moved to Switzerland on a whim and got the first hotel job she could find. She fell in love with the social aspect of the job and soon taught herself how to speak five languages.
Even after her dementia diagnosis, Rogstad still remembered how to speak those languages. "We had a German person come here, and Rogstad was the only person who could talk with him," Bringsjord said. But Rogstad soon found herself forgetting how to do other things, like how to drive a car, which left her homebound.
"I have two good friends I call on the telephone, and sometimes my son comes to visit, but I knew I couldn't sit still all day since I love to talk and meet new people," she said.
Courtesy Julia Hotz
For Rogstad, then, the best part of being prescribed a spot on the care farm isn't the work; it's socializing with her fellow workers.
"They pick us up, we walk around in nature, we have something to eat, we talk, we do a little work, they drive us home, it's harmless," she said. "It's much better than sitting at home."
Unlike Bøhler, Rogstad doesn't have a favorite farm task. "It's all very low threshold." But she said being able to work on the farm has helped her think differently about her disease. "I may not be able to drive a car anymore or do certain things, but if I need help, I just ask for it."
Most of all, Rogstad said, for the sixth time that morning, the farm has reminded her of what she realized about herself in Switzerland all those years ago. "Without people, I couldn't survive."