A PROJECT which aims to transform care for dementia patients with a "home from home" is due to go ahead in York.

Staff at Windsor House in Acomb, York, will work to create a more homely care facility in the year-long project, with proposals to provide self-contained households for residents with an open plan country-style kitchen to make snacks and drinks in.

Other plans to transform the care given to dementia sufferers include painting bedroom doors to resemble front doors, getting rid of staff uniforms and creating life history and memory boxes outside rooms.

It is hoped the pilot – which will run until the end of the year – can be used to help shape the design of the new super care homes, specialist dementia and high dependency care homes, due to open at Lowfield and Burnholme in York in 2016.

Windsor House is among seven elderly people’s homes due to close when the two new homes open, and residents will move into the new facilities.

Graham Terry from City of York Council said: “We want to encourage the people living within our homes to be independent and active, for example, by helping out with every day domestic tasks within the home, and to have the opportunity to talk about and engage in their past life hobbies and interests.

“We hope that making some relatively minor changes to the look of the home will significantly change the way it feels for people working and living together, including their friends and relatives.”