Residents at Cessnock’s Calvary Retirement Community are laughing a little bit harder thanks to the successful humour therapy program ‘Play Up’.
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The Arts and Health Institute program, which has expanded throughout the Newcastle and Hunter Region, involves visits to aged care facilities by specially trained, local humour therapists who help residents look at the lighter side of life.
The Play Up program has been operating at Calvary Cessnock for the past two months and has been particularly successful with residents living with dementia, with the humour therapists working side by side with staff to create a long lasting and playful relationships.
Alan Glover from Wollombi has been working with Play Up since 2011 and describes his job as very rewarding and challenging.
“What we do here is very worthwhile,” he said.
“Even though we are only here once a week, if only some of the progress we make with a residents can then be carried on by the care staff – that makes it all worthwhile.”
Working alongside Alan is Calvary carer Karen Hall, and Alan said it is the relationship between the two that has made the program such a success.
“The way me and Karen work together is very important,” he said.
“I am a trained entertainer but Karen knows the residents and their personalities.
“We need to be able to work off each other and know just what works with each resident.
“Our relationship is the most important thing in achieving a positive result.”
Calvary Cessnock care service manager, Alan Nicholson, said the benefits of the Play Up program on the residents has been a “wonderful thing to see”.
“The individual impacts that the entire staff has seen has just been fantastic,” he said.
“There has also been a real change in the entire group dynamic and we have really been encouraging our entire staff to use their humour and personality to lighten everyone up.
“Humour is just such an effective form of communication especially with residents who might not know what they want.
“And the staff really enjoys the interactions as well so it has been a great inclusion into our programs.”
Many residential aged care facilities have been adopting Play Up to provide the best practice in dementia care and the program has also been found to make a difference to residents with depression or who feel socially isolated.
The program was developed by well-known humour therapist, comedian, author and creative director of Arts Health Institute (AHI), Jean-Paul Bell, who designed the specially tailored program for residents in aged care facilities.
Jean-Paul drew on his years of experience in performance and mime as well as his role as co-founder and director of the Humour Therapy Foundation and their Clown Doctor program.
Play Up also drew from the results of a world first study (the SMILE Study) conducted by the University of NSW’s Dementia Collaborative Research Centre (DCRC).
The randomised controlled trial looked into the effects of humour therapy on 400 residents in 36 Australian aged care facilities between 2008 and 2011.
The study showed humour therapy was as effective as widely used anti-psychotic drugs in managing agitation experience by people living with dementia, but without the side effects.
Jean-Paul delivered the majority of the humour therapy during The Smile Study and witnessed first-hand some of the remarkable changes in the behaviour of residents participating in the therapy sessions.
More than 280,000 Australians are currently living with dementia and by 2030 it will represent the third-largest area of hospital and residential care costs.
It is also believed that by 2050 more than one million people will be living with some form of the disease and in 2014, dementia is projected to be the most common disability in Australia.