Swedish Homes For Aged Short Of Demand

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30497, 20 July 1964, Page 2

Swedish Homes For Aged Short Of Demand

IBy A Reuter Correspondent] STOCKHOLM. Old age is as big a problem in Sweden today as in any other country of Europe. In spite of one of the highest living standards in the world, ordinary families in Sweden, even in the provinces, just do not have room enough to accommodate an aged parent or parents.

At the same time, domestic labour is probably shorter here than anywhere else in Europe and the chances of being able to find anyone to care for old people who are no longer able to look after themselves in their own homes are slim indeed.

The problem is being solved, in part, by the State and municipal authorities—in part only, because avail-

able accommodation of the modern home-to-home type still falls far short of demand. In Stockholm and the larger urban centres, however, from the southernmost tip of Sweden to Lulea and Kiruna in the far north, there are being established old people’s homes planned to give them what they want most—a home of their own. These homes are within an organisation which prepares their meals, watches over their health and relieves them of all the worries of housekeeping and loneliness. In the most modern and best equipped of these homes, the old people even have their own “front door”. Behind it, there is a complete one-room flatlet, with tiny entrance hall, built-in cupboards, toilet and wash basin

with hot and cold water. They bring their own furniture and arrange their rooms how they like. Overlooking Estuary Typical of these new homes is the one situated on a hillside with beautiful views over the town of Sundsvall and the wide estuary of the Indal river. This home takes married couples as well as men or women alone. Couples are accommodated in tworoom flatlets which they can use as a separate bedroom and sitting room or, if they prefer, as two bed-sitting rooms. Instead of sharing one big dining room, where all take their meals together at tables for four or six, the old people there eat in groups of 12, at small tables, in pleasant lounge-dining rooms on each floor. Specially equipped trolleys ensure that the food, prepared in a big main kit-

chen, reaches them as hot, or as cold, as it should be. Each group also has its own kitchenette where the old people can make tea or coffee and light snacks for their visitors. And each person has his or her own locker in which to keep tea, coffee, biscuits and the like. A refrigerator is provided for perishable foods. Every floor has a bathroom fitted with a rubber or plastic bath fixed to a frame which can be lowered to make it easier for the old person to get in. Then the frame is raised, and the bath is filled with water in the normal way. Visitors Can Stay Throughout the building, there are small sitting rooms, many of them containing a television set, and plantdecked halls with plenty of seats. There is also a large garden where residents can sit in the sun when the weather is suitable.

The old people are allowed visitors at any time and, at this particular home, there is even a guest room where a visitor can stay overnight. A large and cheery basement is given over to a hobbies department, where the old people are encouraged, and taught to weave, make rya rugs and Coolly animals, do woodwork and carving for the men, lace-making, tatting, knitting for the women. So popular is this section that it has come to be regarded as a sort of club. While they knit, carve, weave or sew, the old people gossip and drink cups of coffee. This home also has a selfcontained hospital unit and a fully equipped doctor’s surgery. All the old people are free to go out in the town if they want to, and are able to, and they may also go and stay from time to time with relatives—the one condition being that they tell the sister-in-charge or the matron before they leave. Elderly Nomads Probably the most unusual of Sweden’s old peoples’ homes is one devoted entirely to Lapps, at Jukkasjarvi, near Kiruna, over 100 miles inside the Arctic Circle. Lapps too old to live the nomad life of the north are housed there in permanent buildings with all the modern comforts which were unknown to them in the days of their wanderings in the wake of the reindeer herds.

But to prevent them from feeling too cut from the things which they have always known, there are typical Lapp huts in the garden—the summer one; a conical canvas tent built round birch poles, and the winter one, also conical and built round a foundation of birch poles, but with mud walls and roof covered with thick turf to keep out the cold. In each, one small opening serves to let in such light as there is and let out the smoke from the fire which burns day and night on the central hearth. There are also the characteristic Lapp storehouses built on stilts to protect their contents from marauding animals, and the inevitable drying frame, used in the Lapp camp for a variety of purposes from drying the clothes and the tent covering to hanging out the reindeer meat.