With over 200 blogs on D4Dementia, some of them now 7 years old, I’ve decided to spend my 2019 year of blogging by re-visiting some of the topics I’ve covered previously, throwing fresh light on why they remain relevant, and…
Tag: home care
Resolve to tackle loneliness
“It’ll be lonely this Christmas Without you to hold It’ll be lonely this Christmas Lonely and cold.” So sang English glam rock band Mud (in the style of Elvis Presley) to top the UK singles chart in 1974, selling over…
Home sweet home
I seem to have found myself quoting a particular statistic so much in the last few weeks that it is now imprinted in my mind: Alzheimer’s Society: Fix Dementia Care Homecare report I include this stat in my dementia training…
Is your workforce person-centred?
This morning I spoke at a conference on the importance of knowing the person. My audience was predominately social care providers. My remit was to focus on real lives, drawing on my experiences of care in terms of the importance…
Living with dementia in your own home
Whenever a report on dementia talks about what people with dementia want, enabling the person to remain in their own home for as long as possible usually features pretty highly. A diagnosis of dementia should never mean that you have…
A helping hand
When a loved one is living with dementia, it is inevitable that a time will come when they will need additional help and support. A person with dementia may be very resistant to any intervention from any individual, and who…
Special Measures – My view
Last week’s announcement that adult social care providers who deliver sub-standard care face being put into Special Measures from April 2015 proved to be quite a momentous event for me. I was involved in the announcement (details here), and it…
15-minutes of shame
As a light was shone, yet again, on the huge inadequacies within our home care services as the issue of 15-minute visits hit the headlines, I decided to time my morning routine. Just how much could I as an able-bodied…
Caught on camera
CQC’s launch of their document ‘A fresh start for the regulation and inspection of adult social care’ has created a barrage of debate. Amongst the raft of changes and proposals to overhaul the inspection and regulation of care services for…
Why, oh why, oh why?
Incensed. Appalled. Outraged. Indeed there are a plethora of words to describe how I felt on hearing reports of a rise in suspected cases of elder abuse in England, but I’m not sure any of them accurately do my feelings…
Paid to care
When you go into any care setting, either as someone needing care or their family, you naturally expect that everyone who is looking after you or your loved one has been given all the skills that they need to provide…
Keep the faith
One of the first things to become bypassed in someone’s life as their dementia progresses and they become more reliant on social care can be their faith, beliefs or spirituality. This is often as a result of professionals caring for…
Trouble with the language
How we talk about dementia, and people with dementia, is a thorny issue. It is easy to be accused of being politically correct, or losing sight of the real issues by getting hung up on the language we use to…