Award-winning Hawthorndale Care Village at forefront of new dementia care approach

Stroll about Invercargill's just-opened Hawthorndale Care Village and one thing quickly becomes clear – it's just like a regular, everyday suburban neighbourhood, almost indistinguishable from nearby housing.

A shop, café, movie theatre, library, chapel, hairdresser, gym, and playground take centre stage in an expansive indoor area that encourages social interactions. Pathways wend among colourful villas, care houses, and beautifully landscaped gardens filled with fragrant flowers and shrubs.

There isn’t a clinical uniform in sight. Care staff wear regular clothes and help with daily activities in each of the houses, helping evoke feelings of home, family, and friends.

Hawthorndale Care Village is the antithesis of a traditional hospital-based model of care. It’s inspired by The Hogeweyk care concept for people living with advanced dementia, where they are supported to continue with living a life as normal as possible - in a neighbourhood that feels normal, recognisable and secure.

The Hogeweyk Concept co-founder, Amsterdam-based Eloy van Hal likes what he sees in the design of Hawthorndale Care Village - only the second of its kind in New Zealand and one of a few outside the Netherlands.

“I’m very impressed walking around here; how it looks, how it feels, and how the homes really feel like home. It’s fantastic to see the walking paths and many plants and nature.

“There’s a town centre where residents can go for coffee, the chapel, or movies. There are reasons to leave your beautiful house to go and meet other people. These are important principles in how you design a good dementia care village.”

Eloy has been in town for the New Zealand Planning Institute's annual conference and awards dinner where the Hawthorndale Care Village Charitable Trust and WSP won the Best Practice Award in Planning for Health & Wellbeing for their work on the project.

Facilities based on The Hogeweyk Concept aim to enhance the daily lives and wellbeing of people living with dementia, says Eloy. They do this by providing a more open and engaging environment grounded in community.

“Imagine living in a place where you can walk around freely, meet people, and participate in everyday activities. This approach helps residents feel more like individuals rather than patients, fostering a sense of normalcy and home.”

The first tranche of residents has just moved in. They’ve come from recently sold and decommissioned Calvary Hospital.

Hawthorndale Care Village Charitable Trust Chair Frank O'Boyle says the journey to creating the Village started ten years ago with Board discussions about Calvary Hospital not being able to cater for high-needs dementia patients.

With dementia on the rise globally, including in New Zealand, it was “a situation [we] couldn’t ignore”.

It was at this time, he says, that Margaret Brown, the general manager at Calvary, did a lot of research into dementia, and dementia care. She came back to the Board with an option to building a dementia care village based on The Hogeweyk Concept.

WSP planners prepared the Village's resource consent and provided consultancy services for its design. They helped with community engagement, and compliance monitoring during construction. Christchurch firm Foley Group designed the layout of the Village.

WSP technical principal for planning Luke McSoriley says WSP is immensely proud to have assisted The Hawthorndale Care Village Charitable Trust with the resource consent application.

He describes the Village as a great example of large-scale urban renewal in an area with existing infrastructure capacity. It’s been built on a 2.6-hectare brownfield site that had sat vacant for several years.

“As a local community member, it was personally rewarding to have had professional involvement in the project,” says Luke.

“It’s great to see what the Trust has achieved in terms of a bricks-and-mortar development, but, more importantly, their impressive achievements in advancing healthcare for people with dementia.”

Frank says getting the resource consent was a key milestone in the Trust’s journey to building the Village - one that WSP assisted with greatly.

Planners helped highlight the opportunity to renew what had been a vacant piece of land, outline the Village's positive social and health and well-being effects, and benefits of The Hogeweyk Concept.

“The Village could never have been built without the generosity of the Southland people, and the contractors and project managers who brought the Trust’s vision to reality,” says Frank.

“Every time I walk in the door, it takes my breath away. And I look around and think, ‘why isn't every rest home like this?’.

“It's been a successful project, but, for us, success will be when this type of village becomes the norm for rest home care in New Zealand and throughout the world.”