Teen aims to help island's aged

RUNDOWN: The aged care unit at Niue Foou Hospital.

A man with dementia who is locked in his hospital room will be one of the patients to benefit from a teenager's charity project for Niue Foou Hospital.

Rathkeale College student Matt Wilson, 17, is designing an area for the elderly patients of the aged care unit to relax in, with help from Victoria University School of Architecture.

The area will consist of a shipping container with shared facilities, a kitchen, laundry and bathroom, and a separate wooden structure, with four private bedrooms. In between will be a courtyard with partial shade.

The elderly patients now stay in a four-room ward, two people to a room. The rooms are small and some are restricted to their beds, Matt said.

The new area would give patients more privacy but would also provide a communal space where they could socialise.

"Some of the elderly are bedridden so if they want privacy they can go [be taken] into the private area, where they can have their own bedroom."

Matt's father, Garry Wilson, recently visited the hospital and saw a patient with dementia who was locked in his room.

"He gets padlocked into his room, with a bed in front of his door because he wanders off, so we're making a secure area for him so he doesn't have to be padlocked in," Matt said.

Matt has been fundraising to make the project possible and said he had so far received products and services worth $20,000.

Building supplies and a shipping container had been donated, the transport of the container had also been sponsored.

"The most useful donation would have to be Mitre 10 for letting us get the materials at cost and using their facilities," he said.

Matt needs another $20,000 to fully fund the project and will be organising raffles offering return airfares from Auckland to Niue.

Once the design is complete, Matt will help build it, dismantle it, pack it into a shipping container and travel to Niue to help reassemble the structure, which he hopes will take place next April.