You can listen to Episode S5E06 right here!
Lori Pinkerton-Rolet
Hello, and welcome to the Third Age Design podcast, where we do the legwork and you get the edge. I’m Lori Pinkerton Rolet, and this month and next, we’re going green. Today, I’m joined by the Founder and CEO of Green Care Farms in Canada to discuss their novel approach to engaging people living with dementia on an actual farm. What can this project tell us about the importance of biophilic design and why it’s such a critical component of well being for people with this condition? How can you improve the offer of memory care using these principles? And, speaking of well being, our innovation spotlight will introduce you to a new tool which will allow you to audit your own facility for the level of wellbeing it provides along with recommendations for improvements.
Rebecca Churchyard is a social worker, project manager and psychotherapist. As a tribute to her grandparents, Rebecca founded Green Care Farms, Inc in 2021 located in Halton Hills, Milton, Ontario. Her work as CEO of Green Care Farms delivers the first ever nature based programme in Canada for people with dementia on an operational farm. She’s committed to changing the landscape of care in Canada by supporting other Canadians to open more care farms. Rebecca also currently works in a direct service role in the specialised geriatrics healthcare area. Prior to this, while living in Toronto, she gained extensive volunteer experience in volunteer board governance and municipal policy. She served as acting President and Vice President with the Toronto Council, on Ageing board of directors and as an accountability table member with the City of Toronto’s Seniors Strategy. In 2024 Rebecca was nominated and won both the Kitchener-Waterloo, Oktoberfest Woman of the Year Award and the entrepreneur under 40 category, as well as the Ontario Association of Social Workers-Inspirational Leader of the Year award. Obviously, she really is not doing enough. Now residing in Guelph, Ontario, Rebecca is happily dedicated to serving older adults and making the world a better place to grow old. Rebecca, thank you for joining us on the podcast. Let’s start at the beginning. Can you give our listeners a snapshot of what Green Care Farms is really all about? Author, educator and orator, Booker T Washington said, “No man who continues to add something to the material, intellectual and moral well being of the place in which he lives is left long without proper reward.” Well, here at Third Age Design, we’re taking the liberty of adding ‘the place in which he works’ as well. If your career involves the design development or support of elders, of people choosing to retire in new and exciting accommodation, or people requiring additional care, then you have come to the right place. Just take a moment to go to our website at Third Age dot Design and hit the ‘Join Us’ button. When you do, you’ll get a free, TAD Extra, exclusive information for our community members, and only available from us. You will be most welcome. Okay, let’s get started.
Rebekah Churchyard
Absolutely. Green care farms is a operational day programme for people with dementia on an agricultural farm. So it’s an opportunity for people with dementia to be outside, engaged with the nature animals, fulfilling meaningful tasks that bring them a sense of joy.
Lori Pinkerton-Rolet
And by animals, you don’t mean things with more legs than my cat, do you?
Rebekah Churchyard
I mean, most animals are four legged. I don’t know any animals.
Lori Pinkerton-Rolet
Yes, I’m guessing insects when you’re saying so what sort of animals do you have on the farm?
Rebekah Churchyard
So on the farm we have alpacas, goats, Turkey, ducks, chickens, pigs, I think that’s most of them. We also have a barn cat, but those are most of the animals that we interact with.
Lori Pinkerton-Rolet
Excellent. And your inspiration for the concept, I believe, was a very personal connection for you, wasn’t it?
Rebekah Churchyard
Definitely so my grandpa, he was a person who lived with dementia. He was diagnosed when he was 63, years old, when he was a farmer, very young, very, very young. Yeah, it was quite a surprise for my family, because at that age, that’s not kind of your first thought when cognition changes, right? He was so young. So for him, when we were looking. For day programmes for him to participate in. He is not an indoor sort of person. He’s not a fan of a lot of the traditional activities-my grandma would have loved them, but for him, it’s not really his thing, arts and crafts and songs, things like that. He liked to be outside. I learned about care farming as an intervention for people with dementia, when my grandpa was going through his journey with dementia, unfortunately, when I learned about them, most of them, all of them were in Europe and different countries.
Lori Pinkerton-Rolet
And why do you think that this direct contact with nature specifically, I know in your grandfather’s case, it was his background in the way he’d always lived on the farm, but why is direct contact with nature so specifically important for people with dementia?
Rebekah Churchyard
Yeah, there’s a few different ways that I can answer this. I think for people who are looking for more of a research or evidence base, head to our website and check out a bit of the synopsis that we have on the physical, social and mental health benefits that the outdoors has for people with dementia. But just more of a kind of a story based answer to that people, when they are outdoors, feel more at ease the landscape, the soundscape, if you will. So what you could hear? You’re usually listening to birds. I mean, bees, butterflies don’t make a lot of noise, but it’s a lot of soothing atmosphere, ambiance in the environment. I think when we are in different types of landscapes, when we’re in cityscapes, things like that. A lot of the multiple things to hear, to smell, to see, to touch, are overwhelming, over-stimulating for people with dementia. In a nature based setting, all of those connected result in the healing environment. Another way to look at it is the sensory engagement. So our programme is focused completely on what you can see, smell, taste, touch and feel, so a lot of that results in synaptic activity. So what I mean by that is, whenever you have a sensory stimulus, so me talking to you right now, right you’re processing that information because you’re receiving it through a sense, same as if you pick something up and you’re touching it, your brain is required to process that information. Each time it does, it has neurosynaptic activity, so the brain spark plugs are sparking, you could say. And one thing that I love about the Care Farm environment is it’s passive engagement with the senses, so your brain is required to process all of the atmosphere around you, all of this, the smells and the sights and the sounds and the environment. But the individual with dementia doesn’t need to necessarily verbally communicate, and that’s a really important point, because a lot of people with dementia lose verbal fluency, such as my grandpa. So I mean, nature itself is healing. There’s a lot of different terminology there. There’s biophilia, salutogenic. There’s a lot of sectors in health research that are devoted just to proving and providing evidence as to why nature is a healing state.
Lori Pinkerton-Rolet
Yes, I think that absolutely, there absolutely is. In fact, here at Third Age Design, we’re currently working on a wellness audit for a senior living and biophilia, and all of those sorts of things are very, very much part of that research that we’re doing. Is there a reason why you’ve really focused on dementia only and not extended it to other areas of senior living. Or did you just feel that this was really where the need was?
Rebekah Churchyard
Yeah, 100% this is where the need is remains people with dementia, like in my family, I could talk about my family with confidence. You know, my grandpa spent the last year of his life in a locked unit in memory care. Is the terminology that …we yes in Canada, North America, yeah, yeah, yeah, in Canada. So that is a locked unit as part of a long term care facility, and he has he had top quality, top level care, and that’s what they would do to support somebody with dementia at his stage. That meant he’s locked inside, so he literally did not have access to the outdoors. And I just think that’s so profoundly wrong. I think it’s profoundly wrong for someone to be kept from being outside. Especially-dementia is a terminal diagnosis. You don’t get better from it. It’s a neurodegenerative disease. You only get worse. So you’re essentially looking at a Palliative Care application. And I think that nature becomes even more essential. Exposure to the cycles and seasons of life is even more important at that time. You know, in my experience, it very much started with my family. It still is a it still remains my motivation, or my grandparents and their experience, and that is what I cared the most about coming into this. Now I’m five years into it, and we now have two Green Care farms for people with dementia, and we have a satellite location. John and Jessica Zupperelli are opening that in Gray County in Ontario. But before that, I was the first and before I open up the intervention to different populations, we have to get this one right. And I’ll tell you, Lori, I have learned a lot in the last five years. My number one takeaway, hardly anyone in Canada knows about Care Farming, so they have to know what it is first before it makes sense to appeal to different populations, right?
Lori Pinkerton-Rolet
Of course, of course. And you’ve got a very clear target that something you’re passionate about, that you’ve got a personal background in, and that you’re able to sort of build on. I’m just curious, how do people get there? Are loved ones bringing them? Do you…I know you’ve you just mentioned about the second one. Is there a mini bus? Or how do you basically get people to the farm?
Rebekah Churchyard
Yeah. And I’ll start with a with answering a question a lot of people have, which is, we are an insured programme, but in order to become insured, we had to promise that there would be no operation of motor vehicles, no form of transportation involved. I think you know, this is such a new type of intervention in Canada that having the words bus, transportation, agriculture, dementia, all in one go for insurance is not really something that works…
Lori Pinkerton-Rolet
Too much, maybe?
Rebekah Churchyard
…asking for too much. I mean, I’m grateful that we have been insured with no issues thus far, but yes, so we do require that the care partners or a transportation service, local to the person, and we include information about that in our welcome package, but there is a drop off and pick up component.
Lori Pinkerton-Rolet
That’s I can see that that would be very, very, useful. Are there certain levels of decline associated with dementia? We often talk about there being seven different stages, for example, and obviously that’ll line ‘one person with dementia is one person with dementia’. Everybody’s situation is slightly different. But are there certain levels of decline that would prevent somebody from attending your farm?
Rebekah Churchyard
So when we’re looking at who might be right for the programme, the main criteria that we want to make sure of is that an individual likes to be outside. So we are almost a 100% outdoor programme, and we want to make sure that the person who is looking into the programme likes to be outside, enjoys the sunshine, enjoys the fresh air. You know, if they’re if they have a fear of chickens, that maybe isn’t right for them. if they have a allergy to grass, this maybe isn’t right for them. But as long as they enjoy being outside, we mostly work with the family then about how we can support them to be as safe as possible in the outdoor environment. So if they use a gate aid, such as a cane or a walker, and they’re using that gate aid to prevent falls, I would ask the family about the history of falls. If they’ve had a serious number of falls resulting in injury in the last year, then we have to talk about that risk as they come onto the farm, because obviously that risk isn’t going to change, although I will say that in order to build muscles, right, to prevent deconditioning, you do need to be physically active. And the reason why this is such a good programme for so many people is because you are physically active, you’re busy, and you’re using your muscles. So it’s just a balance of different decisions and risks, right? What’s the risk of being life has risks.
Lori Pinkerton-Rolet
Life has risks. You can you can be shut away somewhere and have no risk. But then are you fully living becomes the question…
Rebekah Churchyard
100% so we are risk tolerant programme. That means that we believe in someone’s ability to understand and appreciate–that is the legal definition of capacity to consent. So we believe in someone’s ability to understand and appreciate their decisions for themselves, and if their capacity is in question, such as with people with dementia, then we’re looking to their substitute decision maker to make that decision for them. So my grandpa is a great example for that. He was around farm equipment machinery his whole life. My grandma would have easily made this choice for him.
Lori Pinkerton-Rolet
And sometimes… some people with dementia, it seems to bring out anger issues and things with them. With that in mind, is that something that you check the demeanor of some somebody, or does that mean there are certain sort of tools that you would not have around them, or how do you assess what you’re actually giving people to do and the tools that they would be using?
Rebekah Churchyard
Well, I think those are two different chunks, so I’m going to address them one at a time. To the first part of your comment. What we call it in the sectors behavioural, psychological symptoms of dementia, BPSD, there are other words or terminology for those. There’s personal expressions, there’s responsive behaviour. It’s kind of those uncomfortable or difficult emotions or reactions that someone with dementia is more likely to have, and they don’t have as much of a buffer for socially acceptable behaviour, and they’re much more prone to respond to stimulus in their environment. So if they hear a loud noise and it scares them, they may react in some way. One of the best things about the farm is that you are in an open environment, so you are fully outdoors. You are not confined. I think just my clinical experience with people with dementia, when they are indoors and they’re surrounded by four walls, there’s a feeling of confinement, right? They’re trapped. With people with dementia, there’s often a lot of disorientation, there’s a lot of confusion. So they’re already struggling really, really hard moment to moment, to know where they are, what they’re doing, and who are the other people around them. And then when you add that factor of being confined, closed in, indoors, on top of it, I think that that is the reason why we have a lot of responsive behaviour. I’d be curious, you know, if we look at all of the research we have on responsive behaviours, behavioural psychological symptoms of dementia, how much of it is indoors? Because when you take it to the outdoor environment, when you look at the research from care farming, ubiquitously, across the board, what you see in care farming is a reduction in aggressive I’m using bunny ears, quote, unquote, aggressive incidents or behaviour. And I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that we’re in more of a free setting. We’re more of a relaxed, natural setting. So there’s less antecedents, right? You have the anticipant, the thing that happens before the behaviour, and then you’ve got the fallout, the consequence, what happens after the behaviour. So the, how somebody would be predisposed to an episode of aggression or agitation, I think that part is very different in a care farming environment, you’re less likely to be triggered, if I can use that word to have difficult behaviour. So the second part of your question is around tools. We very rarely have, you know, concerns about behaviour in relationship to tools. What I would say is that if somebody is working with a tool now, tools used very generously, we’re talking like shovels, hand trowels, trying to think about it, wheel barrows, like we are not operating heavy equipment, machinery. We are not operating chainsaws, you know, we’re not using very risky tools, right? But let’s say I’m working with somebody, a person with dementia, and they’re using a shovel. Let’s say they’re using the wrong end of the shovel. You know, the end of the shovel, you or I would use as a spade, right? We want to bring stuff out of the ground to put it into the wheelbarrow. Let’s say they’re using the handle over and over again, and they’re becoming frustrated. They they’re not getting the result that they want, and they’re not kind of putting it together that they’re using the wrong end. What I would probably do Lori, which is very common in dementia support, is redirect from that activity all together. So instead of corrective action where I’m lovingly taking the spade from the person, flipping it over and putting in the ground, you know, I’m trying to correct that behaviour, I would just probably take their hand and say, “You know what, Susan, I’m sick and tired of this activity. Let’s go for a walk. I need a drink. Can you go with me? I need someone to go with me. I’m struggling.” [Divert]…and that’s right, redirect, divert, abort, mission, whatever.
Lori Pinkerton-Rolet
Are there particular tasks that people that go to the farm seem to enjoy the most? And if so, why would you say that is the case? Do you think, or what have you surmised that might be?
Rebekah Churchyard
Yeah, I mean, this year, for the first time, I am bringing my son with me in the programme. So I have a six month old baby, and they absolutely love him. So I think that’s the new favourite, playing with the baby. But, you know, in other years and outside of the baby, I think what people really like to do is be social. Above all this programme is it gives a sense of belonging and a sense of relationship and connection, which it’s so important. And people with dementia, at any age, is difficult to make friends, but especially when you’re living with dementia, it is so hard to make friends and then to be part of those, those community connections, those safe places where we have conversations, we have a cup of tea, and we just kind of, you know, chill, we hang out, we have that connection time. I that is very hard to put into words. It’s very much a feeling, but I know that that is something that people value just sitting in someone else’s company and not having that feeling that you’re doing something wrong, because a lot of people with dementia and care partners would attest to this too. They know what that feels like, too. When you’re, you’re with your person with dementia, they’re trying to participate, trying to engage, and it’s, it’s not going so well. And they feel that, right? They feel that kind of awkwardness in that moment. So in our programme, whatever comes out of their mouth is totally fine. We’re very, you know, welcoming and accepting and nurturing in our interactions. So I think they love that, that sense of belonging, that this is my crew. I belong here. This is my crew. And then, of course, contributing to the sensory garden. So just on Monday, we were separating little baby onions and putting them in the ground. And so to give you a bit of a visual, we have a few of our clients, our members, that are set up on benches. They’re holding in their hands little baby onions and soil. And they’re separating them out so that our Green Care Providers, which is our staff, can put them in the ground. So that’s, you know, working in that teamwork, sort of, you know, that pattern of teamwork, where they’re achieving something, they’re getting things done, and that sense of productivity. Purpose is very important.
Lori Pinkerton-Rolet
Purpose is very, very important, especially for people with dementia. Many of our listeners or operators running care facilities, for example, or retirement facilities, sometimes memory care facilities, and they’ll have landscaped paths with bench seating and often raised beds for planting. You’re not doing raised beds, you’re doing an actual farm setup. Are there any specific design initiatives that you needed to put into place for this user group to make it more comfortable for them.
Rebekah Churchyard
Yeah. So Lori, the farm that we operate on Andrews Farm Market and Winery…it’s a 165 acre fruit and vegetable farm. We spend most of our programming time and a half acre plot called the sensory garden. So when we first started in our first year of operation, we began with a series of community days. Community days are an opportunity for volunteers from the public, so any supported, interested person who wants to come out can come out and help us on those days. We built, I want to save about 30 different structures in the sensory garden, so we actually do have a lot of raised beds, different heights. We have trellises, arbors, I think, 25 different types of boxes. And then we also have a number of different designed beds. So it is designed for people with dementia. I had support from a Landscape Architecture student, Meredith Wilson, in our first year, and we built a design guide for care farming in Canada called ‘Into the Farm Yard, and this was just a marriage of her Landscape Architecture brain and my dementia-friendly building brain.
Lori Pinkerton-Rolet
Okay, and so in terms of designing that, as you said, there are arbors there, there are some raised beds, there are paths of various sorts. But as going back to what you were saying earlier, it’s not necessarily just a flat surface the whole way. So people are using all those muscles and having a realistic, authentic experience.
Rebekah Churchyard
It is farm terrain. Yeah, it’s farm terrain. So we have mulched areas, and the roadway, if you will, on the farm is packed soil. It’s not paved, but that’s correct. Yeah. And we also have planted 140 different species of plants that are specifically intended to stimulate the senses, so everything, smells, looks, feels beautiful or lovely in some way. They’re all non-toxic. And we also have a heavy focus on pollinators, so the birds, the bees, the butterflies. We want a lot of that activity in our sensory garden, and the whole thing is enclosed with a snow fence, and then we have an attractive looking split-rail fence at the front that has a gate, and then we have a chain link around that gate. So it’s very common in a farm to see something like that. But it actually is a wonderful deterrent for elopement, wandering, exit-seeking, or whatever industry term someone’s most familiar with for that.
Lori Pinkerton-Rolet
Perfect, that makes a lot of sense. You don’t want anybody going, going missing on, on a property of that size, certainly would be a little bit tricky for you. It appears that you’ve also started the courses on how to start a Care Farm. And has the uptake on that been pretty much what you expected?
Rebekah Churchyard
totally outpaced any expectation that I had. Um, the reason why I put this course together is because I get questions all the time. How did you start this? Who funds this? What do you do for this? Yeah, I get tons and tons of questions about how to start this and how things you know, how did I translate the knowledge that we knew from the Netherlands and other areas of the world into a prototype for Canada? So I pulled together the infrastructure of my business into a course how to start a Care Farm. I very much made sure that the content of this course is directed for people who are seriously considering this, although, after teaching it two times, I think I will create a Care Farming 101, to kind of introduce the concept of care farming for people as well. And then if they want to proceed into how to start a Care Farm, then they could. And I’ve been blown away by the uptake. I mean, it’s been amazing. People are very, very interested in how to start care farms. And I’d say right now, 60/40 of my time, so 60% of my time with Green Care Farms is in the day programme. That’s always going to be my number one is maintaining that respite for the care partners and a meaningful day for someone with dementia. That’s the day programme. And then 40% of my time is devoted to helping other people start care farms in Ontario and Canada. So it was I could not, couldn’t have predicted that when I started at all. But you know, as a business owner, you want to meet the demand, and that’s something that I really did have the demand for. And I don’t want to ignore emails. I want to give people answers in a meaningful way.
Lori Pinkerton-Rolet
Well, you’re making a difference, and it’s obviously your purpose as well. You mentioned the Netherlands is that related, by any chance, to the Hogeweyk Dementia Village, where it’s… nobody’s locked in, it’s all open, and people are going out all the time. Or when you were speaking to the Netherlands, you were speaking about the Care Farm movement in the Netherlands, specifically,
Rebekah Churchyard
I have been there. I have been to Hogeweyk Dementia village, and actually they are locked in just such on a much, much larger scale,
Lori Pinkerton-Rolet
Yes, but not for long. They’ve the government’s changed the regulations there. They’re not going to be able to lock the front door anymore.
Rebekah Churchyard
I’m really happy to hear that I didn’t know that. I’m really, really happy to hear that That’s wonderful news. You know, someone else that I had a conversation with a while ago explained to me that it could be seen as a further form of segregation for people with dementia, that stuck with me ever since then. I don’t think we’re ever finished, hey, and things that we need to do for people with dementia, just because we have some good ideas doesn’t mean that we’re finished. So in the Netherlands, you have 1000’s of care farms, upwards of 250 care farms, specifically for people with dementia, and at least two 24/7 living facilities that we know of where someone with dementia can live and die on a care farm. So that that is profoundly better than what we have in Canada. What you also have in the Netherlands, we’re, you know, 40-50, years behind them, so it’s not a fair comparison right now. But what we also have in the Netherlands is we have a system where the home-based assessment, where somebody is first given services from their local health authority. So in Ontario, you have a home care assessment, where someone comes to assess your functional needs, and then they may or may not give you services based on those needs. So in the Netherlands, part of that assessment also involves a question to the family, would you like to consider a Care Farm programme? Are you interested in a day programme on a on a farm? Yeah, in addition to other types of day programmes. So that is how well-developed it is, and for the farmer’s side, for people who are providing and operating these day programmes, like me, they have regional cooperatives where you are not alone in this, but you are alongside dozens and dozens of other Care Farm operators in cooperatives, so you can share resources, share supplies, share strategies. And one of my good friends and mentors, Martin Fisher, he’s the director of the Dutch Federation of Care Farming, and they’ve even developed accreditation systems. Sometimes. Lori people ask me about accreditation, and I think it’s like a lovely Canadian thing to do. But also you have to have a meaningful mass before you can accredit something. You can regulate or accredit, something that is so tiny that no one knows what it is, right?
Lori Pinkerton-Rolet
But you have to walk before you can run. And you know there you can, you can continue to grow and expand as you already are with your courses and additional farms and things. I think you’ve had a very busy week. Can you tell us about that?
Rebekah Churchyard
This past Monday, we had our first programme day for the 2025 season, which is always an exciting day, our first day out in the farm. New staff, new members. Everybody’s getting to know each other. I can tell you that about halfway through the day, our new folks were kind of looking around, and each of them, at different times, spontaneously offered something like, I really like it here. This is a good day. I’m having a good time here. And that is quite an achievement. When you’re talking about people who maybe have who are challenged with verbal fluency, who are often, like I mentioned before, disoriented, confused, but they’re offering statements and also apathy. They’re often apathetic, right? So that looks a lot like depression, but not always happy people, I guess, is one way to put it. And every single person offered a statement that suggested that they were content with their surroundings and that they were enjoying themselves. And that is like the best praise that I could get.
Lori Pinkerton-Rolet
That would have made me cry if I were you, did you? You were? You must have been very touched.
Rebekah Churchyard
Well, I’m, I’m kind of used to hearing things like that, but I’ll share with you something that did stick, stick with me, maybe more than some other stories. There was a lady who participated with us last year, and she was quite young. She would have been in her early, early 60s, and she changed quite quickly over the course of the winter. And we found out from her family that she actually is in palliative care now, so not coming back this year, because she changed so much. And I thought, well, that’s so sad as I as I feel when many of our friends in our programme progress. But then I was looking through pictures of last year, and I have so many pictures of her surrounded by flowers, you know, with a watering can in her hand, washing out the buckets, with me laughing with the animals, and she looks so happy like just so full of life and happy. And I am so grateful that her last year of life, it would have been her last year of life, no matter what, but we got to be part of that experience for her, and what a difference that would have made for her life. So that one definitely stuck with me when I thought, and it’s so nice that we could give her that experience in the last year of life.
Lori Pinkerton-Rolet
If a listener is contemplating all the things that you’ve been talking about, in addition to signing up for course, what advice would you give them about setting up something in their own country or in their own area as just a baseline? Where do you start?
Rebekah Churchyard
I think the number one piece of advice I would give is think about what you want to do in terms of your role as a care partner. If I thought about running the Care Farm just as a business owner, or just as a geriatric clinician, I probably would have never got up and went and ran with it. As a granddaughter, I could kind of think through what was best for my grandpa, what my grandma would have agreed to, what would have been appropriate for them as an intervention. I think, as a clinician, it would have seemed too risky, or there are too many barriers in the way, right? So I think as much of a personal role you can give to your intentions, the better, because the second piece of advice is the person’s ability to consent to something goes a very long way. People are going to look for an example. They’re going to look for an example that they can replicate, like me and all of the examples in the Netherlands. And that’s great, but you have to figure out a way to operate in your region and in your country, and that there may not be a pathway, there may not be somebody who has already gone before in the same sector with the same rules, right? So you have to think about, well, what am I asking of someone, and how can I articulate that in a way that I’m explaining their decision to them and that they can demonstrate understanding and appreciation so they can consent to the service that I’m looking to provide? I hope that made sense. I hope that wasn’t…
Lori Pinkerton-Rolet
It makes perfect sense. You’re extremely articulate, but also the passion that you have towards what you’re doing actually, you know thoroughly comes out, and the benefits, I think, going back to the beginning of our conversation, are really quite obvious, if anybody stops to think about it. And I hope that our interview today will spur more people who may be listening to the podcast today to think about what that might be like in their area, what associations that they can make that might foster some of these same principles and benefits. Rebecca Churchyard, thank you so much for joining me on the Third Age Design podcast, and we’ll have links to Green Care Farms, Canada and their courses on the podcast page for this episode at Third Age dot Design. Okay, well, this is a bit different for us. While the team here at Third Age Design are not today’s Innovation Spotlight, we are, in fact, currently developing the innovation, and I want you to be the first to hear about it. Some five years in the making, Third Age Design is in the concluding stages of the Wellness Interior Design Audit or WIDA, working with our Advisory Board and in conjunction with live trials and a shed load of research, the WIDA is being launched mid-October at the International Council on Active Ageing Conference in Anaheim, California. One of our previous podcast guests, Dr David Sheard coined the phrase ‘person-centred care’, and it’s become a much used phrase universally. I know you probably use it yourself. And now there’s a new term being bandied about, ‘wellness’. Okay, but what’s actually meant by wellness, and why is it important? The term sometimes confused maybe with general health, but wellness is brought about by a series of active decisions and individual choices which can be supported environmentally and an interior can be designed to facilitate intellectual, emotional, spiritual, environmental and social growth, not just to provide a list of daily activities and a menu with the interior serving as an envelope for those pursuits. The WIDA is a baseline assessment tool, and when completed, it scores a senior living facility and provides an immediate recommendation list for improvement. You can take it a second time to track your progress and then brag about your true understanding of wellness and how your particular offer supports it. The Wellness Interior Design Audit is coming your way, and it is doing so exclusively through Third Age Design. Remember you heard it here first. As always, let’s take a quick look at the TAD International Events Calendar next month sees the AAIC or Alzheimer’s Association International Conference rocking up at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre in Canada from the 27th to the 31st of July. In addition to speakers and other aspects that you would expect from an international conference, they’re also having a career fair. What a great idea. And later in the year, the Dementia World Conference 2025 is taking place in Boston, Massachusetts, from the 5th to the 7th of September. As always, you’ll find more information and additional events on the ‘Events’ page of our website at Third Age dot Design. Thank you to today’s guest, Rebecca Churchyard, to our editor and producer, Mike Scales, to Valerie Adler of The Right Website, to Peter Thorne, who composed our music and is playing the piano with Mary Blanchard on flute and thank you for listening. Next month, we’re staying in the biophilic green zone with a very special guest Greenhouse Project CEO and fellow podcaster Susan Ryan. I do hope you’ll join us.