A concept of merging nursing homes and orphanages in Canada? Find out the truth ...

Due to the increasingly busy and complicated lifestyles nursing homes for elderly care is a business on the increase in many parts of the world. How about the option of implementing a model to merge these elderly populations in nursing homes with child orphanages, giving an opportunity for these elders to provide love and care to children who are deprived of family affection?

Let's look at this claim, purported to be first of a kind in Canada.

Social Media Posts

A Facebook user shared some photos in a group with below mentioned text.

“A brilliant idea has been implemented in Canada.

They integrated a nursing home into an orphanage. The results exceeded any expectations: the elderly found their grandchildren again, and the orphans knew for the first time the love and care of parents.

The interest in life and even the health of the elderly has improved tremendously. .

Love can heal.”

Facebook| Archived

Similar posts being spread virally in Facebook.

Due to the virality of these posts, we decided to do a fact check on this.

Fact Check

Origins of the photos used in the claim using Reverse Image Searches

One photo which depicts an old woman holding a little child was found on Reddit. It was posted by a Reddit user five years ago, in 2017, and the caption said “My two weeks old niece met her great-great-grandmother today.”

Reddit | Archived

We tried to find the origins of the other image using reverse image search and noticed the photo uploaded by Elena Shumilova to Flickr in August 2016. Even though we could not find any details on the individuals seen in the capture, the location of the photo was stated as “Aalborg. Denmark”.

Flickr | Archived

Hence its clear that both these images are also not related to the claim and to Canada.

Reports on Mergers between Child Orphanages & Elderly Care

We could not find reports from Canada of the kind of merger / integration of nursery homes and child orphanages, claimed in social media posts. However we noticed similar initiatives and here is an article where pre-school children were made to interact with elderly people from a nursing home.

Also we noticed that these social media claims had been viral in 2021 as well, and were able to find a fact check done by AFP- Canada. A spokesperson of Health Canada and Public Health agency of Canada had replied to AFP that there had not been any integration between nursing homes and orphanages in Canada and the social media claims were false.

Also John Hirdes, a professor of Public Health Science in University of Waterloo Canada had rejected that social media claims and had stated that there have been initiatives to support inter-generational interaction between older persons and kids/youth, but nothing of this type, as mentioned in viral claims. Toronto senior home sharing a roof with a daycare and intergenerational living for university students and elders are few such examples.

Also, we found some studies such as this, which had found there were some benefits for all generations in combining daycare for children with elderly community.

And also there are programs in countries like Singapore to increase the intergrnerational interactions via various ways.A story about an elders' nursing home and children's day care centre which are located in same facility where elders interacting with children can be read from here.Archived.

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Conclusion

According to our investigation, we could not find any evidence to support that there were any ongoing initiatives related to mergers/integrations of Canadian nursery homes with child orphanages and Canadian authorities and experts have also refuted the existence of such a scheme.

However, some studies show that there were benefits for all generations in combining daycare for children with elderly community and we noticed similar initiatives where small children were made to interact with elderly people from nursing homes.