It is an autumn day in 2017 when the 24-year-old Iris Westerveld drops her gaze on a large farm in Valthermond, on Funda. Westerveld immediately sees it as the place where she can make her dream come true. “We made a bid on Thursday and it was ours on Friday.” There the start of a residential care farm started.
“The world of care institutions often feels a bit clinical. Bare corridors, closed doors, residents who hide in their room,” says Westerveld. But she wants to do it differently: “Not a place where you only live, but really a house where you live. A farm where people who have had bad luck in life can again feel what it is like to be part of a family.”
“I absolutely did not want people here to feel that they are in an institution,” says Westerveld. “I want you to just lie here with your legs on the couch, such as at home.”
Soezijn, the name that Iris and her stepfather Bouke Hoogland (60) give the farm, soon becomes more than just a place of residence. People who often do not fit somewhere else: young adults with psychological problems, residents with intellectual disabilities or people who could not go anywhere anymore due to circumstances.
In other places, care is often caught in rules, here it is different. “Here residents get new shoes when they need them, a pack of shag if that helps not to pick up butts from the ashtray, or a hairdresser’s hairdresser who comes by every six weeks. No luxury, but basic care that does not always turn out to be obvious.”
A resident says it simple: “In other houses you feel a number. Here I am seen, here they just say good morning and ask how you are doing. That sounds simple, but that means everything.”
The text continues under the photo