To achieve these benefits, several principles of care are used:

A psychosocial approach, rather than a medical model, is used in order to provide each resident with as normal and familiar a lifestyle as possible.

Residents are helped to experience the setting as a pleasant family home, aided by:

• the resident's homelike appearance, with comfortable living areas, inviting kitchen, garden room, patio, and bed-sitting rooms furnished with personal belongings.
• staff's appearance and style of action. Staff act and look like friendly relatives or companions, not a work force or hierarchy.
• an atmosphere of emotional support, warmth, and respect. When residents have problems, staff respond with empathy and diversion, not coercion.
• resident's significant degree of autonomy, choice, and participation. Residents are helped to continue as much of their self-care as possible and to join in familiar household tasks and events of daily living like gardening, singing, and discussing memories and interests.

Staff and specialists in memory-loss work with residents to develop individualized approaches and environmental modifications that fit the unique developmental needs, abilities, and customs of each. This support continues as residents become more cognitively impaired.

Staff initiate familiar activities and daily exercise to satisfy residents' need for stimulation and engagement and to minimize negative obsessions and interactions. Exercise also helps maintain vigor and nighttime sleeping patterns, which may fail as memory fades. An increasing need for quiet respite is also honored.

To help prevent feelings of confinement and frustration, staff help residents develop patterns of activity focused within the residence, guiding them away from exit areas and engaging them in pastimes they enjoy. Staff seek to know at all times the whereabouts of each resident. Exits are visually disguised.

Decisions about care and environment are based on residents' diverse and changing needs, not on institutional convenience or traditional practice.

The program enables healthcare workers and students to learn these methods. It facilitates research and can serve as a model of effective care.