Staff and family attitudes to fences as a means of detaining people with dementia in residential aged care settings: The tension between physical and emotional safety

Content Provider	Semantic Scholar
Author	Dreyfus, Shoshana J. Phillipson, Lyn Fleming, Richard C.
Copyright Year	2018
Abstract	This study investigates staff and family attitudes towardsthe use of the fences that surroun d many aged care facilitiesin Australia, in the context of indefinite detention of peoplewith dementia. This indefinite detention has been describedin a report from an Australian Senate Inquiry as “a signifi-cant problem within the aged care context”, which “is ofteninformal, unregulated and unlawful” . Five focus groupscomprising direct care workers, family members, nurse unitmanagers and facility managers discussed the reasons forand their attitudes towards fences. The results show a ten-sion between the provision of physical and emotional safety.This is to say that even while it is illegal to detain peoplewith dementia against their will, and even while partici-pants understood the negative impact of fences on the well-being and emotional safety of people with dementia, theyaccepted and supported the presence of perimeter fencesbecause they provided the perception that fences kept peo-ple with dementia physically safe. This has implications forredressing the balance between physical and emotionalsafety in policy and practice.
Starting Page	107
Ending Page	122
Page Count	16
File Format	PDF HTM / HTML
DOI	10.1002/ajs4.34
Volume Number	53
Alternate Webpage(s)	https://ro.uow.edu.au/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4516&context=lhapapers&httpsredir=1&referer=
Alternate Webpage(s)	https://doi.org/10.1002/ajs4.34
Language	English
Access Restriction	Open
Content Type	Text
Resource Type	Article