Case Study: Riccall House, York

Riccall House is an eighteen bedded residential EMI home that is situated within a Victorian building with a modern extension. The residents at Riccall House have a wide variety of mental health needs.

While at the Harrogate Dementia Conference I approached Multimount to see whether they would be prepared to let us run a pilot project within a small residential home to see whether the signs would be beneficial in a home type environment as opposed to an environment that is purpose built for care.

At Riccall House some of the issues were people "getting stuck" in the corridor near the study – it is a 45 degree turn and residents can have trouble locating their way to bedrooms and back to the dining room and lounge.

We had a meeting with Peter from Multimount and discussed our requirements and decided on signs that were size suitable for our home and showed residents directions to bedrooms, lounges, dining room and toilets / bathrooms.

The signage was put in place two months ago. We have canvassed staff opinion and monitored the residents’ responses to the signs. We have found that people are less disorientated in the dining room as they can now easily see the signs for toilet and the direction to take towards the lounges. Residents are now looking at the signs on the main staircase that show bedrooms are upstairs and they appear to be more orientated to their surroundings.

The toilet and bathroom signs are particularly useful and have proved popular with residents who previously were confused by plain white doors to toilets, bathrooms and bedrooms. The bright colours and pictures work well for residents and relatives also comment that they are a useful orientation feature around the home.

We have also been trying the memory box for bedroom doors. Staff have commented that the memory box is useful for orientation purposes when the person reaches their room and it is nice for relatives to be able to assist with adding to the memory box. Our corridors at Riccall House are fairly narrow, so the boxes are not in full view unless you are physically standing outside the room. We have not noticed specific orientation using the memory boxes, but when noticed residents comment on the lovely things in them and they are conversation starters.

We greatly appreciate the opportunity to pilot the signs and memory boxes within our home and we will be rolling this project out to our other three homes.

Leonnie Martin
Training Manager
Riccall House