In the Netherlands old people’s homes have been closed and instead elderly have to live at home as long as possible. This is what is expected, but it is also what people want nowadays. Elderly couples help themselves and if one of the partners gets too sick the partner local nurses give care, and family, friends and neighbors are expected to help as well.
Often a forced separation takes place if one of the partners get so sick she or he needs to go to a nursing home. By law nursing homes are obliged to also offer an apartment for couples, but in practice there are only a few of these apartments available. Most nursing homes are only set-up for individual patients. In an age where the number of greying people in Dutch society will double in the upcoming twenty years, a new formula needs to be found for the last difficult phase of life. Some say it is time for the revival of the elderly home.
Dutch documentary maker Frans Bromet is producing a two part documentary series about forced separation of elderly for the Dutch public broadcaster NTR. During the filming it turns out that the documentary also is about the impact of Alzheimer’s disease, sine it runs out that all the protagonist suffer from this disease.
For this documentary series Featurez gave advice, did the research, set up and planning, accompanied the filming and recorded the sound.