Trinity team delivers new universal design guidelines for long-term residential care settings

Posted on: 03 March 2026

The diversity and changing nature of resident needs, health conditions, and dependencies, as well as the range of visitors and staff who typically occupy an LTRC setting, necessitate a welcoming and inclusive environment.

And the new guidelines will help to provide the kind of accessible, safe, comfortable, and adaptable design required to support these diverse and evolving needs.

Funded by the Health Research Board, this project was led by Trinity – by Desmond O'Neill, Professor, School of Medicine, and the Centre for Medical Gerontology as Principal Investigator, in collaboration with experts from the TrinityHaus Research Centre in Trinity’s School of Engineering (Tom Grey, Dr Dimitra Xidous, and Jennifer O’Donoghue).

Members of the research team at the launch of the new Universal Design Guidelines for Long-Term Residential Care settings.

The COVID-19 pandemic, which disproportionately affected older persons and particularly those living in LTRC settings, really shone a light on the need for new guidelines to deliver improvements.

“While the primary impacts of COVID-19 were illness and death, the secondary impacts of isolation, loneliness, lack of physical activities and social interaction that resulted from infection control measures were also devastating to people living in these settings,” said Dr Xidous.

“That’s one reason why the design of future LTRC settings must fully consider how a more resilient built environment can enhance infection control, while also maintaining quality of life during a pandemic.”

But this resilience must also extend to the impacts of climate change, including such hazards as storms, flooding, or heatwaves. Wider sustainability issues such as biodiversity are also critical, along with management and use of energy – not just in terms of climate change mitigation, but also in terms of adaptation and security of supply through economic or climate-based disruptions.

Finally, continuing to live in your own home is a major part of “ageing in place”, but research tells us that is also about a continuity of community, staying close to family, friends, and local services, and remaining in familiar environments where a person has a strong sense of place.

In this understanding of ageing in place, it becomes vital to carefully consider the location & community integration of LTRC settings so that people can move to a local setting and maintain their sense of place.

The new guidelines address the complex and interconnected issues and challenges described above through a LTRC Planning & Design Framework, which includes:

• Core design values: Quality of life and Quality of Experience; Inclusion through Universal Design;  Sustainability & Resilience
• Evidence based design across key spatial scales
• Key Design Considerations including overall UD Principles; Key LTRC design issues, and a range of sustainability, climate adaptation and resilience topics
• Good practice exemplars and case studies used to illustrate the design guidance
• Levels of Design to illustrate how important features range from minor to major interventions
• An Engagement & Co-creation Strategy to facilitate collaborative planning and design

“Eleven LTRC facilities from across Ireland served as case studies for facilitating the research, and without their engagement the work would not have been possible,” added Dr Xidous.

“Finally, and most importantly, we would like to thank all the residents, their families and friends, and staff, who were kind enough to take the time to participate in the research, and who provided essential insight into their lived experience of residential long-term care.”

The LTRC facilities that engaged closely with the research team were: Anam Cara Housing with Care, Fold Housing; St Joseph’s Centre Shankill; Glenaulin Nursing Home; Peamount Healthcare; Newtownpark House; St Brendan's Community Nursing Unit; The Village Residence; Haven Bay Care Centre; CareBright; St Brendan's High Support Unit, Mulranny; and Ballyshannon Community Hospital.

Other key investigators and collaborators were Age Friendly Ireland; Age Action Ireland; Health Service Executive; the Centre for Excellence in Universal Design; London School of Economics and Political Science; Nursing Homes Ireland Care Champions; O'Connell Mahon Architects; Maastricht University; Built Environment Consultant Bill Benbow; and Ann Coyle.

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