What three years in dementia care homes taught this student...

Teun Toebes, 26, took part in a unique social experiment, living as a resident in two Dutch dementia care homes, for a documentary and book about how society treats the elderly. His conclusions are fascinating BY KAREN ROCKETT

- BY KAREN ROCKETT

She had no money or coat but the bus driver let her on board and the elderly woman with dementia, who had walked out of a care home, headed back to the village where she had once lived to visit her neighbours.

Wil Vis, 89, wasn’t supposed to have the code to open the doors of the closed ward of the nursing home in Amstelveen in the Netherlands, where she lived. But nevertheless she managed to slip out behind someone else.

Her roommate knew all about it though. But then he would. For he was Teun Toebes, a 26-year-old Gen Z student who had befriended the pensioner while living in the home himself — not as staff, but as a resident. Toebes lived in two Dutch dementia homes over a period of three and half years in his early 20s in order to make the documentary Human Forever, with filmmaker Jonathan de Jong. It premiered in October 2023 at the G20 dementia summit. The aim was to change the thinking around the way society views people with dementia.

“I knew she had gone but when she was brought back by her daughter, I asked her if she’d had a good day and her face just lit up and she said it was so good to see her neighbours again,” Toebes recalled. “Why shouldn't she?

You might call it wandering because she has dementia but I call it walking.

Alright, she didn’t have her coat on but do we really have to eliminate all risk? At what cost? Life is risk!

“I strongly believe that we need to listen to the voices of people with dementia and give them their freedom and autonomy, even if that does come with risks.”

Toebes — whose mother is a psychiatric nurse and father an accountant — became friends with Wil, a former tailor and librarian, during his stay at Verpleeghuis Groenelaan (Green Lanes Nursing Home) and the unlikely pair would hang out in each other's rooms, chatting and drinking tea, all as part of Toebes’ social experiment to discover what it is really like living in a care home 24/7.