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…
Tag: social care
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…
Are you in the 15% or the 85%?
I see a lot of dementia statistics in my work, but none have shocked me more than that which Alzheimer’s Disease International (ADI) published on 21 September 2022 as they launched their 2022 World Alzheimer’s Report. ADI said: “Up to 85%…
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…
It’s time to change the record
Social media often gets a bad press, sometimes justifiably so, but it can be an amazing place to connect with people who share our views and experiences too. Something came my way last week that fits into that positive category…
Cure the care system? I wish
How ironic that in the week before Dementia Action Week, this year themed around social care reform, the latest Queen’s Speech yet again failed to provide detailed plans to address the issues that have plagued the care system for years.…
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…
Knowledge is power
One of the loveliest parts of my work is being able to help people by sharing our experiences as a family, augmented by what I have learnt from my campaigning and consultancy in the 8+ years since my dad died.…
Demanding better for people with dementia
Ordinarily, September is dominated for me by World Alzheimer’s Month (or World Dementia Month as I prefer to call it), which in practice means 30 days of sharing all of the great content, ideas and initiatives that lots of fantastic…
‘Old’ normal, ‘new’ normal or time to make a ‘better’ normal?
For the last four months I’ve written about different aspects of the coronavirus pandemic. For July, I want to think about life post-lockdown and pose these questions: What do we REALLY want ‘normal’ life to look like now? Is a…
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…
