Be bold, be different: a conversation with Elroy Jespersen about The Village Langley

"There are people who are saying we can't continue to do what we've always done.  Don't tinker around the edges and make things a little bit better in the same old template that you've always had. Get rid of that. Change it radically, be bold, move forward."

Elroy Jespersen envisioned a different type of community where people living with dementia could live their own best life.  His vision has resulted in The Village Langley, a groundbreaking community designed for people living with dementia and memory related conditions that offers cottage style living surrounded by five acres of walking past gardens and farm animals. 

Learn more about The Village Langley: https://verveseniorliving.com/the-village/

Learn more about the Strengthening a Palliative Approach to Long-Term Care project at: https://spaltc.ca/

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome to the Strengthening a Palliative Approach in Long-Term Care Alliance podcast, exploring challenges and best practices and palliative care approaches for individuals in long-term care.

SPEAKER_00 0:16

Elroy Jesperson has enjoyed a long and distinguished career in community recreation and senior living in both the public and private sectors. After several years managing community recreation centers and senior centers, he joined Verve Senior Living in 1989 to lead the development, construction, and operation of numerous senior living communities in Western Canada. As his retirement approached, Elroy envisioned a different type of community where people living with dementia could live their own best life. This vision resulted in the Village Langley, a groundbreaking community designed for people living with dementia and memory-related conditions, that offers cottage-style living surrounded by five acres of walking past gardens and farm animals. Elroy continues to champion this model as the president of Friends of the Village, a not-for-profit society whose mandate is to promote and support other organizations in developing a village in their own communities. Welcome to the podcast, Elroy.

SPEAKER_02 1:18

Thank you. I'm pleased to be here.

SPEAKER_00 1:20

I'd like to start a little bit by having you tell me a bit about yourself. I understand that you grew up on a farm that was also a home for children, and I wonder if you can tell me a little bit about that.

SPEAKER_02 1:31

Absolutely. I grew up in central Alberta, and my parents ran a home for children who came from broken homes and needed a home. When I look back and think about living there, what that did, it really taught me about the meaning of community and the meaning of caring and sharing with others. It gave me an unlimited supply of playmates and mischief makers. And often we had up to 50 kids living in this great big building. And so that was my normal. So when I left there to move to BC and started living other people's normal lives where I lived in an apartment alone, or once I got married, it was sort of different for me because my upbringing was quite unique. And I think looking back, that really played a part in me moving into the field I was in and doing what I did in terms of how do I create places where we can build community and help people live a good life, no matter the disabilities or limitations they're living with. And then I moved into community senior centers where we're gathering places for seniors, and I began to really see the value of places where older people can gather and support each other and do things together. As I was assessing my career path, I thought, well, I'm not sure if I wanted to do this for the rest of my career. And I've always had a bit of an entrepreneurial streak in me and wanted to do things differently. So I thought, well, maybe I can move to another industry that would allow me to do some of that. Unfortunately, I happen to see DiversityCare, now Verb Senior Living, advertising for a general manager for their first senior community they were building in Western Canada, in Richmond, where I lived at the time. And I thought, well, I know building operations and I know creating a good time. What I don't know is much about healthcare, but there are other people who do know that. So I think if we got together, we could create a unique place. And that was my start. And it was because I thought it would give me an opportunity to create the places where ultimately I or my family would want to live. So 30 years later, the village was created. It was this desire to create a better place for people. And I knew very little about older people when I got into this. But I began to learn quickly that the system that we all operated in, and what we knew as normal was the system that came from the hospital setting, and it was designed around hospitals. And I'm thinking that's not where I would want to live. So it the feed of doing something better right from the start was planted, and I would start thinking, how can we make it more fun? I knew very little about dementia other than the fact that as we were building places and opening places, I began to see that there was this one group of people who really didn't quite fit into what we were doing. So I started thinking, what could we do differently to provide a good environment for them? So I started doing research. And that's where early on I discovered in the US a company called Action Pack was championing what they call the small house model. And I'm thinking, okay, that makes a lot of sense to build homes that look very residential. I could fit into any neighborhood and have a group of older people live there with support. And then in about 2013, I think it was, Eloy Van Helf from De Hogavy came to Vancouver and did a presentation, and I listened to it, and I'm thinking, oh, they've created a community, and people are living in little houses, although much different from what I imagined because European architecture is different from Canadian. But I thought, having a pub and having a restaurant and a theater and a store, well, that sounds like a little village. So I'm thinking, well, I can take that idea and marry it with my small house, and maybe we can create a village in Canada. Having grown up in the children's home where I grew up on 42 acres, and we had a small farm, and I had chores to do, and chickens to feed, and cows to milk, and you know, potatoes to weed and all sorts of stuff as I was growing up. And I thought, I'm sure many other people have had this outdoor farm-related upbringing and would really understand and become engaged with the outdoors. We really started thinking, how can we create what I call purposeful places and outdoor spaces in and around our houses in our village where people can engage with nature, with animals, with each other in an outdoor setting. And so that sort of became the framework for the village.

SPEAKER_00 7:56

So tell me a bit about some of the features at Village Langley. I'm wondering if you can talk a little bit about some of the highlights that you really love about the place. For example, animals. It strikes me that people connect with animals and it gives them a sense of peace, right?

SPEAKER_02 8:11

So we didn't give a lot of thought to specific animals because we were busy trying to get the village open and the buildings tasked by the regulators and licensing inspectors and all of other necessary things. But we kind of knew we wanted what I articulated as a farm. And so our builder says, okay, I'll build you a barn. So we built us a barn without a lot of input as to who would live there and what would happen there. For the first few years, not a lot happened on that, but we quickly realized that if we were going to have a farm, we needed a farmer, somebody who understood that, you know, you have to get up in the morning and feed the animals and let the chickens out. And so we finally found somebody, and she came with four chickens named after the beetles. And so the chickens moved in, and then we added some more chickens, little chicks, and watched them grow up. Then we had not-for-profit farm animal sanctuary near us. I said, We have a couple of pygmy goats that need a new home. Would you be interested? So we said, absolutely. So we got Milo and Blackberry, the pygmy goats that moved in and they roam our two-acre meadow. You know, it is something that the villagers engage with. We are looking as time goes on to expand the farm, get more animals, get more engagement. So it's one thing that we see really as important as our store and as our beefstrown pub. And it is a necessary part of living and life because people need a purpose, people need something to be engaged in, people need a way to serve others and help. And so all of these pieces really provide that because that's what it's all about is living a purposeful, what we call an enriched life. So our whole focus is on the enriched living. We say we're not a care community, we're an enriched living community. And yes, some of the people living there need some care in order to live their own best day, but it's not about the care, it's about the living. And so that's a big challenge often to have people who work for many years and have been educated in the system that we all operate in, to change their mindset, change their way they see the world, change the way they do their job, because we're different.

SPEAKER_00 10:48

Yeah, that's a really interesting distinction, living your life as opposed to being cared for. And part of living your life is being cared for. I can imagine that some of the other challenges, along with you mentioned licensing as well and people understanding the role, but also the more commonplace risks around patient safety, and people with dementia might wonder how do you balance making this like a home and a life, but also ensuring the patient's safety and making sure that you're following legislation at the same time.

SPEAKER_02 11:20

We all need a little help from our friends, right? Yes. Absolutely. You know, we still want to live our life our way. One of the biggest challenges to getting the village underway was we knew we needed to find the right place. One day I happened to be reading the newspaper when they had newspapers, and the Langley School Board was selling four unused school sites. And so I went and looked at those sites, and when I saw the site we're on, which was seven acres and treat on three sides, and really a big open space, a blank canvas, I thought they're full work. And so that really allowed us to really say, okay, let's acquire this and let's design a village in this space. And one of the beauties of this site is because we knew that there are people who purposefully or otherwise might wander off the site and get lost and not be able to find their way home. So we said, we need to secure the perimeter and do it in a way that it's not overt. It's there, but nobody sees it. We were able to have an eight-foot fence around false sides and secure it to our community center, put plants and bushes, blueberry bushes, blackberry bushes in front of it, so nobody will walk through them anyway. So once you're inside the village and we have one single point of egress and entry that we monitor so we know who's coming in, who's going out. But once you're in there, you can roam around the seven acres freely. And one of our principles is called roam free. And that's probably one of the things that really differentiates us from the typical senior community, whether it be for dementia or not. We said we need to build something where they can get up in the morning, walk out of their bedroom door, walk out the front door of the house, walk around the village, engage with what they want, and be able to find their way back and not run into any barriers and try to minimize up. So that's why all of the houses are single story. But from our principle of roam free, we had to do that because that was very important. And that's probably one of the things that most people experience first and has the most impact, is that they aren't locked up. Typically, most places have a locked unit that people can't move out freely. And that in my mind is what causes a lot of the aggression and behaviors and abnormal things that might happen because when I think of me being locked up, I'm not a happy camper. And so the roam-free piece, being able to move about and engage in a variety of different things with people who become their friends is a paramount piece of what we do.

SPEAKER_00 14:25

Oh, that's great. Are there spaces for family members as well to come and visit?

SPEAKER_02 14:31

We welcome family members. I look at families as partnering with the village team in supporting and helping their family. And it's not them and us. Some people talk about a family gets dementia, not a person, because it impacts a whole family when one of their family members develops dementia and needs support. So there's a whole piece around families that we can continue to learn and do better than typically saying, you know, don't worry, we'll take care of your mom. You just come and visit periodically. That's not how it should be.

SPEAKER_00 15:08

Yeah, because we really want the support of your family around you.

SPEAKER_02 15:12

Families we know.

SPEAKER_00 15:14

And I would imagine then that this extends to the end of life as well. People can die in the place where they're comfortable.

SPEAKER_02 15:22

Yeah. We've had several people choose to die in the village, and we've had family be part of that experience and gather around and stay for several days as a person is passing on, and we offer that opportunity for them to be with their loved one in their final hours.

SPEAKER_00 15:44

And that keeps them out of the hospital environment again, right?

SPEAKER_02 15:47

Absolutely. You know, sometimes that's not possible. Sometimes an incident happens that takes them to the hospital and then things spiral down and they don't have the opportunity to come back and die at home. We say this is their home. And that's one of our guiding principles is have people make their home in one of our houses.

SPEAKER_00 16:09

I mentioned that you are working with a non-for-profit society to help other communities develop a similar home. Can you tell me a little bit about that?

SPEAKER_02 16:19

When I initially started to think and plan and envision the village, I needed to really understand why I was doing this. So I gave a lot of thought to that. And I finally came up with to demonstrate a better way to enrich the lives of the people we serve. When I was dreaming about what's possible and articulating that to people, most people got quite excited about that and said, Where can I see it? And I said, Well, you can't, because it's up in my head and it hasn't been done yet. So I knew that part of our purpose had to be to do it and demonstrate to others that it is possible, that it is better than what was out there in the normal, and not a better way to care for people, but a better way to enrich their lives, which includes care. So, what can we do to help more villages grow around the world? And so we created this not-for-profit society called Friends of the Village, whose mandate is to educate people, show people through the village, talk to them about how the village came about, and support them in trying to develop a village in their community, whatever that means.

SPEAKER_00 17:46

And maybe not always like a farm model, right? Could it be like a different model depending on the type of community?

SPEAKER_02 17:52

Absolutely. And it needs to fit into the community. So we did 75, but I can see somebody in a smaller community building 25. It would fit into their community and maybe the right size to support people living with dementia in their community. You don't need to build huge mega mansions or towers. I was in a conference not long ago, which was designed for people living with disabilities or supporting people with disabilities. And when I did my presentation, I said, How many of you know somebody living with dementia? Everybody raised their hand. I said, How many of you know somebody living with dementia who's living in a care community? 75% raise their hand. I said, How many of you want to live there? One person raised their hand. So I said, here is a problem. All of us are in the business of supporting people with disabilities or living with disabilities, but none of us want to live in what's up there. What are we going to do about it? If we do nothing, guess where we're going to live? Our first principle was be bold and be different.

SPEAKER_00 19:15

That's awesome. Are you continuing to grow the village in terms of different features or new things?

SPEAKER_02 19:23

We don't want to become an isolated, segregated community. We want to be part of the larger community. And they said, you know, you could do a day program. So we embarked down that road and we did a trial this summer, and we're going to expand it next year. And we've partnered with Friends of the Village and the Village Langley investors and a lady who runs the Adult Cognitive Wellness. And the three partners are going to introduce this day program where we bring people from the larger external community, most of them living with dementia, living at home to experience the village, experience an outdoor day program with animals and vegetables and flowers and games and music. So we're going down that road. But when we did that, we realized that some of the infrastructure that we had back at the farm needed to be changed to better support that. So we're now in the process of really imagining what an ideal farm in our situation could look like with trees and paths and greenhouses and covered gathering areas and compost dens and washrooms and all sorts of stuff.

SPEAKER_00 20:47

Wow. Ambitious and bold, as you say.

SPEAKER_02 20:51

Well, it has to be bold. And like when I was thinking about this and I was getting closer to retirement, I thought, you know, if I don't do it, who's gonna do it? And so if I don't do that, who will? And I looked around and I didn't see anybody. And then I said, if I don't do it now, when will I do it? So we got on it and started to do it. And that was sort of a motivator in that. I just felt I couldn't end my career without actually giving it a try. Last summer I had people from Taiwan, I had a couple of people from Belgium, I've had people from the US come and say, we want to create villages in our communities. So wanting to and doing it is a bit of a jump. That's where the future challenge comes. How can we help people get there?

SPEAKER_00 21:56

What are you most excited about for the future?

SPEAKER_02 21:59

There are people who are saying we can't continue to do what we've always done. So I'm excited about the people who are actually saying, okay, now we want to figure out how to do it. And we talk about what they need and again be bold, be different. Don't tinker around the edges and make things a little bit better in the same old template that you've always had. Get rid of that, change it radically, be bold, move forward.

SPEAKER_00 22:30

It's wonderful. Thank you so much for speaking with me today, Aura. It was a real pleasure.

SPEAKER_02 22:35

My pleasure. As I say to people, we're all out to change the world.

SPEAKER_01 22:42

You've been listening to the strengthening a palliative approach in long term care podcast. For more information about our project, visit spawnltc.ca.