The Ehpad – accommodation establishments for dependent elderly people – welcome more than 600,000 people in France, three-quarters of them women, with an average age of 85 years.
By denouncing the cases of mistreatment of a certain number of establishments (belonging to the Orpéa group), Victor Castanet’s book, The Gravediggerspublished by Éditions Fayard, also had the merit of highlight life in nursing homes.
Even when you have a loved one who lives there, you often don’t know what the daily life of these establishments is like. Toilets, meals, entertainment: the residents are the subject of a lot of attention and care throughout their day and share with the staff a daily life made up of small and big moments. Old age can even be joyful, including in nursing homes!
To tell us about daily life in an Ehpad, Geraldine Mayr receives Caroline Gros. She was animation coordinator in Breton nursing homes for eleven years, author of News from Ehpad at Blacklephant editions. She takes a look full of humanity on those who for the most part live there their last years.