Enhancing Quality of Life of Elders in Care and Attention Homes through a Luminous Facilities Management Model

Increasing life expectancy and reduced mortality are leading to significant growth of the aging population in Hong Kong (HK). The proportion of elderly residents is projected to rise further from 17.7% in 2019 to 26.5% in 2031. To tackle this problem of rapid aging, the HK government re-confirm to enact the ‘aging in place’ policy in 2011 and ‘long-term care’ policy in 2012 (HK Housing Society 2019). Care and Attention (C&A) homes, therefore, accommodate the elderly in the same place even if their health deteriorates. However, most people have experienced change in their vision by the age of 50. 174,800 persons have difficulty seeing resulting from age-related impairment and eye diseases (Census & Statistics Dept 2015), which significantly affects their independence in daily life. Although the government provided additional subsidies to non-governmental organizations for the special needs of elderly, the funding was mainly used to improve manpower rather than the facilities in homes. Indeed, inappropriate luminous environment reduces elderly vision-relevant Quality of Life (vQoL), leading to health and safety problems. Physical living environment is a recognized dimension of vQoL (World Health Organization QoL Assessment [WHOQOL] Group 1998), and is likely to be particularly important for persons living in residential care. Due to visual impairment, many older people spend most of their time at home and rely on luminous facilities management (LFM) to compensate for their physiological health problems and also to maintain their psychological well-being. However, the latest official Code of Practice Residential Care Homes (Elderly Persons) in HK (2013) still only mentions ‘adequate’ artificial lighting required in homes without providing any specific lighting guideline. There is extensive literature on lighting, FM, caring environmental design, post-occupancy evaluation (POE), visual issues, and QoL for adults in general and elders in particular, but little research integrates all these aspects in C&A homes for the elderly. The purpose of this study is to enhance the vQoL of elders in C&A homes through LFM. Its objectives are: (1) to factorize LFM components in C&A homes and vQoL indicators for elders; (2) to establish LFM–vQoL relationships; (3) to develop an integrated LFM–vQoL model; (4) to verify the model using longitudinal data; and (5) to propose LFM guidelines for enhancing vQoL for elderly residents in C&A homes. The findings will promote the development of a proactive holistic assessment of LFM in C&A homes, and enhance the vQoL of elderly residents in C&A homes.