I want to start this blog by sharing a graphic from a social media post from a wonderful friend and colleague, Nicola Payne: The graphic Nicky shared got me thinking about myself and my friends and family, but also about…
Tag: care providers
Resolve to challenge assumptions about independence
Without a doubt, the topic of how to support independence has seen the biggest volume of training enquiries for me in 2022 (I touched on this in my September 2022 blog). I attribute many of these enquiries to the post-Covid…
What makes everything ok?
“It’ll all be ok.” A common phrase we all use when we want to reassure someone. However, for people with dementia it’s not always that helpful. Yes, it offers a low-level of verbal reassurance, but that may not be understood, and…
Finding familiarity in unlikely places
We talk a lot in dementia care about the importance of familiarity, whether it’s achieved through using words or phrases that are familiar to the person, or whether it’s through familiar environments (OWL FM) or familiar items or objects. Familiarity…
Make a difference like no other
If there is one thing that everyone in social care is acutely aware of currently it would be the recruitment and retention crisis. People who need support and their families are suffering due to the workforce crisis, staff are being…
Dignity: We all want it
Dignity, alongside respect, person-centred care, choice, control and independence are all, in my view, part of the basics of care and support. We all want all of the above for ourselves, so why wouldn’t any person with care and support needs…
Person-centred care in Covid times
It’s hard to believe it’s almost two years now since the coronavirus pandemic began to impact upon all of our lives. One of the major problems many care providers have had since then is how to balance the need for…
Making meaningful conversation
“When was the last time you really engaged with a person living with dementia?” This was a question I posed during a recent online training session I ran with a small group of social care staff. Some of the…
Resolve to not put off until tomorrow what you can do today
As we come to the end of a year that I’m sure no one expected to turn out the way it has, most of us are probably feeling that our coping skills have been sorely tested. The exponential rise of…
When eating just isn’t happening
One of the topics I haven’t covered in depth on this blog is refusal to eat. So many of my blog posts are inspired by our experiences with my dad, and one thing he never did was refuse to eat,…
Coronavirus and being isolated from a loved one
Last month I wrote about the coronavirus pandemic and answered two questions families supporting a loved one are grappling with: How do we hand-wash more and how do we self-isolate? For families who aren’t in the same household, however, they…
Coronavirus and living with dementia – Coping in unprecedented times
It’s not easy to know where to begin with a blog on the current monumentally uncertain times that the world is facing, but I’m going to attempt to address the coronavirus disaster (I don’t think the word crisis goes far…
Who is really challenging?
As regular readers of D4Dementia will know, I’ve long been a supporter (including through the National Dementia Action Alliance Campaign ‘Dementia Words Matter’) of using respectful language – as defined by people living with dementia – when communicating about dementia. I…
