At Providence Mount St. Vincent in West Seattle, a care home for older adults has run a full-time childcare centre inside its own building since 1991. Around 120 children, from babies of a few weeks old to five-year-olds, spend their days under the same roof as roughly 300 residents. They paint together, sing, read, play games and make sandwiches for a local charity. Staff and families describe residents who light up when the children arrive and children who grow up treating older people, wheelchairs and walkers as a normal part of life.
The idea became famous in 2015, when a trailer for a documentary filmed there spread around the world. Here is how the programme works, what we know about the benefits of mixing generations, and what anyone can take from it.
A preschool inside a care home: how it started
Providence Mount St. Vincent, known locally as “the Mount”, has cared for older people since 1924. Before 1991 its leaders asked what would make a large, century-old institution feel more like a home. One obvious missing ingredient was children. In 1991 the Mount opened its Intergenerational Learning Center (ILC), a licensed childcare and preschool programme run on site, five days a week.
The response from parents has been striking. The centre’s director told Education Week in 2015 that the waiting list had never been shorter than 450 families, and media attention made it longer still. The Mount’s own foundation reportedly contributes more than $1 million a year to keep the programme going, because tuition alone would not cover the cost.
What a typical day looks like
Contact between the generations is built into the schedule but never forced. Residents can drop into a classroom whenever they like, or join planned sessions such as:
- Art and music, where a child and an older adult share paints, instruments and songs.
- Story time, often with residents reading aloud to small groups.
- Cooking and service projects, such as preparing sandwiches together for a local programme that feeds people experiencing homelessness.
- Visits to residents’ floors, including bedside visits to residents who are less mobile and have said they would welcome children.
Some of the most valuable moments are unplanned: a hallway conversation, a wave through a window, a resident handing out stickers. Staff have described residents with memory loss joining in conversations and games with the children more easily than with adults, and children learning patience when someone moves or speaks slowly.
The documentary that made it famous
Documentary filmmaker Evan Briggs spent the 2012–13 school year filming at the Mount. Her working title was Present Perfect, and in 2015 she launched a Kickstarter campaign to finish the film. A short trailer went viral, and the campaign raised more than double its $50,000 goal from well over 1,900 backers. Briggs told Education Week that Children do not have the opportunities they once did to interact with people much older than their parents.
The finished feature was released as The Growing Season and premiered at the DOC NYC festival in November 2017. According to the film’s website, its trailer has been viewed more than 250 million times across social media, and the project helped inspire the Care Across Generations Act, introduced in the US Senate in 2019 to support shared sites for children and older adults.
The trailer above shows the original Present Perfect footage filmed at the Mount.
Why loneliness in care homes matters
Moving into residential care solves some problems, such as round-the-clock help, but it can make others worse. Many residents have lost a spouse, friends and the routines that gave their days shape. Visits from family may be infrequent, and the people they see most are other residents and busy staff. Loneliness and social isolation in later life have been linked in research with depression, poorer physical health and faster cognitive decline.
It is also worth correcting a common framing. Putting an older relative into care is not simply a “Western” failing. Families everywhere face hard choices when someone needs nursing care that a household cannot provide safely, and multigenerational living, though more common in some cultures, has its own pressures. The real question is how to keep care settings connected to ordinary life, and children are one of the most natural bridges.
What the evidence says about mixing generations
Intergenerational programmes now exist in many countries, from shared-site nurseries in the UK and Japan to “grandparent” reading programmes in schools. Studies of these projects are mostly small, but they point in a consistent direction:
- For older adults: more smiling, conversation and engagement during sessions, and a stronger sense of purpose. People living with dementia often respond to children’s play and music even when other activities have stopped holding their attention.
- For children: better comfort with ageing and disability, more empathy and, in some studies, gains in language and social skills.
- For staff and families: a livelier atmosphere and more reasons to visit.
The honest caveat is that long-term health effects are harder to prove. Most research measures mood and behaviour over weeks or months, rather than outcomes such as hospital stays or lifespan. Programmes also work best when they are well planned: activities suited to both age groups, trained staff, attention to infection control and respect for residents who would rather not take part.
Bringing the idea closer to home
Not every community has a preschool inside a care home, but the principle can scale down:
- Families can make visits to older relatives a regular, child-friendly routine, with drawings, simple games or a shared story rather than long silent visits.
- Schools and nurseries can partner with a nearby care home for monthly visits, pen-pal letters or video calls.
- Care homes can invite local groups (scouts, choirs, toddler groups) and set aside a welcoming space for them.
- Older adults living independently can volunteer as reading helpers in schools or libraries.
Organisations such as Generations United in the US publish guidance and directories of shared-site programmes for anyone who wants to start one.
The lesson from West Seattle is simple: young and old do not need to live in separate worlds. Put them in the same building with a little structure and a lot of patience, and both sides gain something that is hard to provide any other way.
Sources: Education Week (2015); ARCADE: Where both ends of life meet; The Growing Season: crew page; Collective Evolution (original story).
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In the year 2000 I did my architecture graduation project and one of the buildings I proposed was exactly a pre-school and day-care for elderly. 16 years later I'm sad for not having seem this kind of structures with my own eyes, however I'm glad to now of some here and there.
ReplyDeleteThat formula seems to me a HUGE benefit to one of modern societies problems - elderly "abandonment" - and with such a simple solution at hand, that enriches both elderly and young, I don't know how it hasn't become a normal practice everywhere.
Thank you for sharing and keep it up. One step at the time we'll make a better society.
Love this...
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