The Guardian's recent article entitled "Where are the growing population of dementia sufferers going to live?" raised a number of interesting questions about the care of dementia sufferers in the community.
Over the last few years we have been working alongside the University of Stirling in designing flooring and walling materials for the Iris Murdoch centre which specialises in dementia. Working with the University of Stirling and Burnett Pollack Architects, this partnership was a key driver for the development of our Altro Suprema product. Prior to Altro Suprema all of our safety flooring would contain sparkly bits of silicon carbide – essential in preventing people slipping over on wet surfaces but potentially confusing for people with dementia. Altro Suprema was a major innovation as we pioneered a way of replacing the sparkly silicon carbide with materials that gave an equally good technical performance, thereby ensuring the same level of safety but in a solid colour format that could be used in private housing and care homes to keep people safe.
The article's comment that "The potential for innovation in dementia care, design and support within the housing arena is huge with regards to improving and enhancing autonomy, quality of life and independence" is close to our hearts. Our latest product, Altro Aquarius, was again inspired by the need to provide a safety floor in environments such as bathrooms where there are both wet and dry surfaces and people walking on those surfaces in both shoes and bare feet. Our approach to product development has always been to work with customers to understand the issues and then develop pioneering solutions. This article shows how important this pioneering, forward thinking approach is as we all get to grips with the challenges offered by a growth the number of people suffering with dementia.