Hans Becker dominates aged care in Rotterdam (Holland), a city of 600,000 people, where his Humanitas group has 31 affordable housing and care facilities, developed over 16 years and include many high rise buildings. He has a waiting list of 12,000 people. An eccentric, he prescribes that a barman is just as important as the doctor and he has 61 barmen on his payroll. He also prescribes that a bottle of day keeps the doctor away. Last year he delivered 8,000 bottles of champagne to residents.
He offers four core values:
1. control your own life - if the resident doesn't want to wash for three months and be smelly, let them
2. you should care for yourself use it or lose it, he claims - too much care is worse than too little care, so hold nurses back from helping overly much
3. the extended family approach - staff have to be part of the extended family, meaning respectful and not patronizing
4. the yes culture - start with yes and then commence dialogue. If an elderly lady has five cats, say yes she can keep them and then work through the cats ages and how they can be shared out
