Abstract
With the cooperation of the Elderly Welfare Department and regional residents of City S, a regional joint exercise program was conducted over five years for residents of cognitive impairment group homes throughout the city. It has been reported that cognitively impaired elderly persons are eight times as likely to fall than people who are not cognitively impaired 1 ), so a group exercise meeting accompanied by a greeting and sending off entails significant unpredictable risks. Nonetheless, facility participation rates have exceeded 60% for five consecutive years. The ADL of participant users tends to show an increase in the severity of conditions requiring nursing care, as 78.8% can walk unaided, roughly 80% require carers to change their diapers, 12.8% improved their independence, and 37.2% cannot participate or have suffered from declining independence. However, the participation rate varies according to daily conditions, the anticipated value of the regional joint exercise program is high, and the “demand for an emergency system for use when a disaster occurs” for regional residents was evaluated highest at 4.7 on a 5- level scale. Transporting severely cognitively impaired users to the venue once yearly revealed the substitution function of evacuation training. As the significance of participating in the city joint exercise program, it can be stated that opportunities for interaction with regional residents significantly contribute to communicating the need to understand and to monitor cognitive impairment while accompanied by unpredictable risks. Also, the demand for a regional, collaborative assistance system during emergencies is clarified, and the potential for communitybased function expansion is revealed.
