28 AugOld People’s Home for 4 Year Olds
A new five part TV series called Old People’s Home for 4 Year Olds premiered on ABC TV on Tuesday, 27 August. The series is based around a unique social experiment where a group of older retirement home residents are brought together with a group of pre-schoolers, to see if this inter-generational contact can improve the health and wellbeing of the older people as well as enhance learning outcomes for preschool aged children.
Aged care and early learning sector representatives were briefed on the new series at the ABC Melbourne studios in Southbank during late July. Over a period of seven weeks, the two groups of ten elderly residents and ten pre-schoolers, are brought together for planned, mixed activities each day in a specially designed early years learning space built within a care/retirement home. The two groups share a structured timetable that encourages physical activity, social interaction, learning and happiness.This social experiment, run by a team of geriatric experts and a child education expert, scientifically analyses and monitors the progress of both groups – tracking quantifiable and measurable physical and mental changes that result from the experiment to the health and wellbeing of the older group, and the developmental growth of the children (including changes in language, cognition, movement, and emotional and social development). Based on a similar program in the UK, Old People’s Home for 4 Year Olds delivers five weeks or heartwarming and enlightening television for a wide evidence but will be of particular interest to aged care and early years professionals.
Old People’s Home for 4 Year Olds commences screens at 8.30pm on ABC and is available on the ABC Iview app.
