Invercargill’s new aged care facility and dementia village will be officially opened in mid-March, and the Hawthorndale Care Village committee has invited the Prime Minister to do the honours.
The $39 million project has set the stage in New Zealand with its state-of-the-art aged care model, allowing residents to be integrated into a secure village society.
Employing all local labour, the build has been made possible by Amalgamated Builders (care houses) Henderson Construction (care centre) Bennett Homes (villas) and South Roads (civil contracts).
The bespoke village of 13 care houses offers a total of 86 beds for people with various stages of dementia and elderly care needs.
Residents in the villas will start moving in February while the 72 residents are scheduled to make the transition from Calvary Hospital in May.
Board spokesperson Paddy O’Brien said the grand opening will have invited guests and dignitaries and they were hoping Chris Luxon will be able to attend.
“Getting it open is such a wonderful achievement by all the community and reaching the target for funding has seen everyone’s efforts come to fruition.”
He said the contractors and the board have had to battle challenges along the way - having started pre-Covid the costs escalated from an initial $35 million to $39 million, and then there was the constant weather to contend with.
“The team onsite has worked through some really trying conditions.”
Also featured in the village is a main care centre which houses hairdressers, a coffee shop, theatre, chapel library and gym amongst the 1000sqm of building footprint.
Residents were encouraged to explore the property safely with colour coding and other visual clues guiding their path, and home cooking would replace hospital-style prepared meals to further enhance that feeling of everyday living.
The technology in the facility was second to none, with sensors in bedrooms to detect when residents had left their bed or gone into the corridor, so the nurses would know they were up.
For locational purposes patients could be geotagged, and the village would be geofenced.
Paddy said these security systems were designed to be as unobtrusive as possible to retain a homely feel.
“Thank you to the community funders and the people of Southland for all of your generosity, the Hawthorndale Care Village is something we can be all immensely proud of.”
Keep an eye out for more updates closer to the time on the grand opening of Invercargill’s latest aged care and dementia facility.