Because the children and the elderly just, get along, so very well, don’t they??? From the Newspapers, translated…
The newest trend in caretaking of the elderly, is developing a “Children Caretaker” system, with the energies of young children, helping to bring more life back into the elderly’s lives. This idea was inspired by the Japanese, the Healthy Center of Zhongzhen District in the city of Taipei worked alongside the Trust Foundation, and started setting up a system of children caretakers, creating this environment where the elderly and the young can learn together.
The unique system of elderly care with the younger children being involved, found in a nursing home in Japan allowed the community’s elementary and middle school students to send in résumés to work as helpers to the caretakers of the elderly, including giving the elders massages, playing game with them, etc., etc., etc. Not only the children would be learning how to interact with the elderly, the elderly, with the constant companionships of the younger generations, were very happy too.
The department manager of the Health Center in Zhongzhen District in Taipei, Lin stated, that the Zhongzhen Health Center had been a long-term neighbor of Trust-Friendship Foundation, one specialized in elderly care, the other, with the focus on the education of the younger children. They’d both been inspired by the elderly daycare center in Japan, and, the two “neighbors” decided, to combine resources.
The first step of this plan, to train the high school and university students as “Brains Volunteers”. Lin stated, that on Grandparents’ Day last August, they’d put together activities for the elderly at the Life Square, and the Zhongzhen’s Health Center of board games, to help the elderly get more active in the mind in the games, to spark that love of life, and zest in life again.
Then they’d, hosted the “Story Time of Grandparents, the Fun in Reading Illustrated Books” volunteer training. And this time, they’d invited the elderly to become the storytellers, and, with the volunteers from the foundation, leading the elderly to understand the fun in reading the illustrated books to children. And, this group of elderly averaged at seventy-five years learned to make the visual aids “caterpillar puppets”, and, before Christmas Eve, they went to tell stories to the children in the preschools in the community. And after this, the older adults got together to practice telling stories every week, and, the program planned, to have these elderly at the health center to tell the kids the stories as they go into get their inoculations.
Lin believed, that if the younger generations learned early how to get along with the older generations, then, we will all be able to, live under this, big umbrella of the systems of elderly caretaking.
And so, this, is a GREAT program, getting the children from younger years involved, in sharing time with the elderly in the community, and, if the children started off young doing this, then, surely enough, they would, learn how to get along with the elderly in the population, which would make the programs of caring for the elderly in the community more smoothly…