Painted Fox Co began as a necessary tool without a name…
Our mother lives in a long-term care home. We are passionate advocates for her and we strive to work with the staff to ensure important information is communicated. No small task, especially during a pandemic that kept us locked out of the home for months at a time.
It’s unrealistic to expect overworked and understaffed teams to remember every detail about every resident, especially with contract staff coming and going. We also can’t rely on a long-term care resident with dementia to accurately communicate preferences or mental and physical needs to staff who rely on such information. So we created a pretty poster for our mom’s room, hoping that the information included would serve several purposes:
- To communicate preferences and phobias to staff, allowing them to more suitably support the needs of the resident (who happens to be our mom);
- To present medical information, including current conditions, medications, and historical treatments (to emphasize successes and to avoid repeating unsuccessful treatments);
- To provide caregivers and volunteers areas of interest, to facilitate meaningful conversations;
- To encourage staff to treat residents with the respect they have earned; this isn’t just a resident, but an intelligent and witty human being with a valued life and a rich history;
- To remind the resident (especially one with dementia) of their own history: previous careers, hobbies, accomplishments, family, pets, etc. Sometimes we forget who we were. Who we are. And it’s important to remember.
Our mother’s favourite animal is a turtle (especially painted turtles): strong, wise, peaceful. Our father’s favourite animal was a fox: clever, charming, generous.
Painted Fox Co.
What Motivates Us
“It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.”
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
“It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.”
Albus Dumbledore
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better.
Theodore Roosevelt
The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood… who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly…”
Painted Fox Co 