Bothered and bewildered by the portrayal of dementia

The portrayal of dementia on TV and in the arts has undoubtedly risen since my dad was living with dementia. From major soaps to numerous stage plays, dementia - it seems - is popular subject matter.

I’m not against portraying dementia when it’s done in a fair and equitable way that, crucially, educates. When I say educates, however, I don’t mean in the usual awareness-raising way, or by opting for the predictably negative portrayal that is perhaps most closely associated with dementia on TV or in the arts.

My biggest gripe against the Oscar-winning Still Alice was the total omission of any examples that showed how Alice and her family could have lived better with simple environmental modifications. For example, signage that would have assisted Alice to get to the toilet in time in her holiday home.

My interest in the portrayal of dementia in the arts was ignited again last November when I went to see 'Bothered and Bewildered', one of the numerous stage plays focusing on dementia. The official synopsis of ‘Bothered and Bewildered’ says:

"This is a comedy drama about one woman’s struggle with Alzheimer’s. The play follows Irene and her two daughters Louise and Beth as the girls lose their mum in spirit but not in body."

Comedy and dementia

Those with a keen eye on language will find that synopsis somewhat troubling, and being in the audience was certainly an uncomfortable experience for me. I’ve often debated with myself how I feel about the use of comedy in relation to dementia, and this play laid bare those internal debates again.

Whilst many others laughed, I couldn’t and didn’t throughout the whole play. That’s not to say that I don’t appreciate that humour has its place in dementia care - I sometimes laughed WITH my dad during his years with dementia, but never at him. 

Often people with dementia do things that to those observing them are strange - in these circumstances the first human response is often to laugh to conceal our own lack of intuition and understanding. But look beyond what you're seeing to consider the reasons behind why a person is doing what they are doing and suddenly you think very differently. 

You feel sadness that the person’s damaged brain is leading them to outward expressions that barely conceal what is likely to be an internal turmoil of acute confusion. You might attempt to try and walk in that person’s shoes to imagine how they are feeling, knowing that you can switch off from that state of mind at any time, whereas the person is living with their dementia 24/7.

Supporting family carers

The dubious comedy element in this play wasn’t my most overwhelming feeling, however. More than anything I wanted to jump on the stage and help Irene’s daughters to understand their mum better and cope better as a result.

During the play Louise and Beth were immensely frustrated with their mother, didn’t know how to handle her paranoia and hallucinations, ended up looking for their mother with the police when she’d left the house in the darkness dressed only in her nightie, and felt driven towards seeking a care home place for her. 

The classic unpaid family carer scenario of trying to juggle work with caring responsibilities was also explored, with one of Irene’s daughters giving up work to try and care for her mother. The only professional support shown in the play came from a doctor, who for the purposes of the play asked far more questions than most doctors I’ve ever met. Despite this, however, he offered nothing by way of tangible practical support.

What needs to change

I accept that the portrayal of Louise and Beth’s struggles are entirely reflective of the experiences of so many families. Indeed, there were elements that reminded me of my experiences with my dad, but my frustration is that we don’t move forward from this.

In January 2020, every person with dementia and their family still cannot access universal, comprehensive post-diagnosis support, nor do they have access to their own Admiral Nurse, and most will find that care and support largely relies upon untrained and unsupported family carers until, more often than not, a crisis occurs and professional support is urgently needed.

It’s a disgraceful reality facing numerous families, and the portrayal of this element of a family’s experience of dementia in ‘Bothered and Bewildered’ is perhaps all the more striking when you consider that this play wasn’t written recently - it was first performed in October 2014, proving that so little has changed.

I’m sure that dementia will continued to be portrayed on TV and in the arts in the years ahead, hopefully not just by showing the difficulties, the frustrations and the sadness, but also by showing the environmental changes that can make a difference in someone’s home, the meaningful professional support (Admiral Nurses etc) that can enable families to cope better, and (fingers crossed) even progressive initiatives like peer support groups (DEEP and DAI) and training for family carers.

If we could have all of that, with less focus on laughing at the person living with dementia, we’d be making progress. 

Until next time...

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Resolve to ask people with dementia what THEY want

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 updating them with some of my more recent experiences. For my last blog of 2019, I want to look at how we listen to and respect the viewpoints of people with dementia.

In July 2015, I wrote a blog post entitled: 'Why don't we listen to people with dementia?'. In that blog I said:

“If we are ever to move beyond stigma and discrimination and towards a truly world-class model of support and care for people with dementia, then giving people with dementia a voice and listening to what they have to say really is the only place to start.”

It was, therefore, with some amazement that I read a report about the UK Dementia Congress debate last month entitled, ‘Environmental lies in care homes play an important role in delivering person centred care’. The Journal of Dementia Care said the following about the debate:

“When can you lie to a care home resident? It was a hotly contested issue at UKDC last week, where delegates debated the use of “environmental lies” in care settings, such as fake windows with painted views, “bus stops” to which no bus ever comes, and disguised doors. “As a person with dementia when I go into a care home I do not want them to lie, either in the environment they create or in their actions,” said Keith Oliver, who opposed the motion that deceptive décor can play an important role in delivering person-centred care. It was an impassioned performance from Oliver, who has young onset dementia, which helped sway the audience from favouring environmental lies at the start of the debate to being firmly against by the end. But independent nurse consultant Lynne Phair, fought valiantly in favour of the motion and said there could be a therapeutic value in meeting the person with dementia in their own reality. Phair added: “Environmental lies must be used wisely.” But there was a resounding victory for the motion's opposers – also including Professor Graham Stokes – who had 54% of the audience behind them by the end (compared with 33% at start), while the proposers – also including family member Catherine Naj Dyke - had 37% on their side by the end (40% at the beginning).”

For me, the quote from Keith Oliver says it all, and frankly not only would I have supported Keith had I been at the debate but I wouldn’t have had the temerity to argue against him (which would make me a useless debater!) even if I felt fake environments were a good idea (which I don’t) for one simple reason - He is living with dementia, I am not. My natural standpoint is to show deference to any person living with dementia, putting aside my personal viewpoints and remembering what my dad always told me: “Respect your elders and betters.”

Keith’s views, I suspect, are echoed by many people living with dementia, including the numerous individuals who are living with dementia in care homes and largely don’t have a voice. From my experiences with my dad, I know he found the fake letterbox, door knocker and doorknob put onto his care home bedroom door utterly baffling, and why wouldn’t you? They didn’t function as these items normally would, and they seemed to have been added purely for decoration following a dementia consultant being engaged to ‘improve’ the environment. Sadly, what this consultant didn’t factor in was the amount of confusion and frustration such changes would cause.

In my work with care homes, I have never advocated for the implementation of fake environments. I have always felt, and seen this borne out numerous times, that if the care and support is good enough, if staff really understand dementia and are well trained and supported in their work, then the needs of residents living with dementia will not only be met but continually exceeded.

The money spent on fake environments, which is often considerable, is always likely to be better spent investing in staff. It is people that make the difference in dementia care, nothing is more important than the human element, and to reinforce this I go back to the point I made at the National Care Forum (NCF) Managers Conference last month, and which was reported on by the NCF's Nathan Jones: 

“A hotel environment is just window dressing if the care is not there.”

The type of environmental changes I support are based on bringing the person’s life story alive. I love to see environmental life story work that enables people to be reminded of things in their lives that make them happy or proud. After all, most of us like being surrounded by family photos, mementoes from holidays, and career, hobby, sporting or musical passions or achievements. Most people fill their homes with items that are personal to them, and that is the most apt way to create a supportive environment for a person living with dementia. Even if it’s only within their own bedroom in a care home it is better than the stark, plain, hospital-like rooms that so many people with dementia exist in within care homes, and certainly better than deliberately introducing items or decorations that depict something utterly fake. 

As I said in my September 2016 blog, 'Life story work - The gift that keeps on giving':

“Documenting memories and turning them into vibrant resources that tell their own unique story has a magical quality about it that I can’t put into words – you really just have to try it.”

So, if you run a care home and are planning some environmental changes in 2020 (or beyond), resolve to: Find out what people living with dementia actually want (ask them! And if the people you support aren't able to help, contact organisations like DEEP or Dementia Alliance International), prioritise life story work for anyone you support who wants to participate in that, and always keep it real, not fake.

Thank you for all your support in 2019. Until 2020...

You can follow me on Twitter: @bethyb1886
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The private world of incontinence

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 updating them with some of my more recent experiences. This month, I want to look at continence.

In June 2013 I wrote a blog entitled ‘An urgent need to understand’, which talked about some of the experiences we’d had with my dad’s incontinence and ways in which a person can be supported to maintain their continence. In that blog I said:

“The devastation that incontinence can cause both the person with it, and potentially a spouse or family member who is caring for them, is immense. The more private a person is the harder it will be felt, which was certainly true for my father, who was incontinent for nine years.” 

Continence, perhaps more than any other issue, is strongly linked to privacy. In my experiences as a mum I know that not long after a child is potty trained they begin to want privacy when going to the toilet. Such privacy soon becomes the norm for the rest of their life, unless incontinence accompanies a progressive health condition like dementia, in which case needing the support of another person, whether they are your own family or a health or care professional, becomes the new norm. Just because it’s the norm, however, doesn’t mean it feels normal or will ever feel normal.

Continence problems are strongly associated with ageing, but certainly don’t exclusively affect older people. Last month marked World Continence Week, with a statistic that bladder weakness alone affects 1 in 3 people and is more common than hayfever.

Continence has come onto my radar many times since I wrote ‘An urgent need to understand’. Professionally this has predominately come through my training and mentoring consultancy work, with one particularly striking example being when homecare staff from one of my consultancy clients came to me to discuss a lady living with dementia who was repeatedly developing bladder infections and soiling herself. 

The infections increased the lady’s confusion, and despite trying to provide optimal support staff said that they felt they were failing this lady every time she got another infection. I encouraged staff to really think about how the support being provided was responding to this lady over the course of each 24-hour period. Care staff often only analyse the time they spend with the people they support, rather than what is happening when they aren’t there.

It transpired that this lady was only using the toilet when staff weren’t present, and would often put off going to the toilet for many hours purely because she was confused about the time care workers would visit and concerned about her privacy (staff learnt that this lady had had a bad experience with a previous care worker during a trip to the toilet).

Many different approaches were taken to resolve this issue, including ensuring the lady had a dementia clock so that she knew what the time was, a personalised schedule that was clear to her for when her care visits were, and a lock on her toilet door (that could be opened from the outside in an emergency).

Simple measures, but alongside staff really understanding this lady’s need for privacy for the first time they proved to be the difference in supporting this lady to use the toilet more regularly, thus reducing the recurrent bladder infections she had and improving her quality of life as she soiled herself less. 

I would always encourage anyone supporting a person who is struggling with continence to think about the bigger picture, considering how the environment and the person’s routines and plans for the day are affecting their continence. If the person’s day-to-day life isn’t supporting them to use the toilet as often as they need to, problems are inevitable.

Continence hasn’t just come onto my radar through my experiences with my dad and my work, however. On a personal level, continence is something that my midwife was really open with me about during my pre and post-natal care when I had our daughter. 

Any lady who’s has a baby will have heard the iconic words, “Do your pelvic floor exercises!” Pelvic floor exercises aren’t just for women who’ve recently had a baby though. I’d argue that they are important throughout all of life, as the stat from World Continence Week ‘Prolapse can affect half of all women over 50’ shows. Although pelvic floor exercises alone won’t cure prolapse, they are often recommended alongside other treatments.

I’ve always felt that preventing incontinence is a great deal easier than treating the physical, mental and emotional effects of incontinence purely because incontinence is about so much more than just wearing a pad. As I said in my ‘An urgent need to understand’ blog:

“Changing our attitudes towards continence, and breaking down the taboo’s associated with going to the toilet, must be a key priority if we are to improve the care provided to everyone who is living with dementia.”

Until next time...

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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 for health and social care professionals, which might seem strange since many social care staff that I train and mentor are working in care home environments, but this one statistical sentence opens up so many extremely interesting discussions about the role of ‘home’ in our lives, the links to independence, choice and control, and the feelings and emotions evoked by ‘home’.

The role of ‘home’ in our lives

Why such an overwhelming number of people would want to remain at home is unsurprising. Our homes are meant to be our place of safety and security, places we personalise, feel comfortable, where we can truly be ourselves and do as we want.

So what about the 15% of people who don’t necessarily want to remain at home - do they not have all of those feelings about their home? They may well do, but those feelings are possibly tempered by concerns about family members providing care and support, or the person is living alone and considering a communal home due to fears about isolation and loneliness.

‘Home’ is a really interesting concept in dementia care. As a person’s dementia develops, the role of the person’s home can change: The person may form an attachment to their home that becomes overwhelming to the point that they won’t venture out, if the person does venture out they may not be able to find their way home again (even if they’ve lived in the same neighbourhood for many years), and sometimes home can become an alien place that the person no longer recognises, even though nothing has changed in numerous years.

Home, in the person’s mind, may become somewhere they lived in their childhood or earlier life, which could lead the person to go out to try and find that home again. “Please take me home,” may also be a frequently used phrase if the person is somewhere they don’t recognise, like a hospital, care home, or their own home that simply doesn’t feel like theirs any longer.

When ‘home’ is the problem

Often we assume that so long as the person remains at home, being part of that 85%, they will cope fairly well with their dementia. Yet the person’s home, for all its perceived familiarity and comfort, can sometimes unwittingly contribute to symptoms like disorientation and frustration.

Environmental changes are rarely high on the priority list when families are caught up in thinking about the person’s immediate care and support needs. Sadly, the knock-on effect of this lack of environmental awareness is family members, friends or neighbours gradually doing more and more for the person (and/or a crisis occurring), which can negatively impact upon those providing unpaid care and is even worse for the person with dementia.

In that utopian world where everyone has good post-diagnostic support - which I would argue is a human right - the person and their support network would be assisted to look at how the home is working for the person, with the end result being the creation of a more enabling environment (using the world-leading research from the University of Stirling as a benchmark), where the person’s independence could be preserved for as long as possible and their need for care and support reduced.

The home might be modified to include:

•   Word and picture signage to help the person navigate around their home, and instructions to enable the person to operate household items (or even just to be able to make THEIR guests a cup of tea rather than the guests taking over and doing it themselves).

•   Clear door and drawer fronts so that the person can see what is inside a cupboard or drawer.

•   Colour contrasts across the home but particularly in the bathroom so everything isn’t white.

•   A layout that reflects how the person currently moves around their home, and changes as the person’s needs change - for example, you might remove internal doors to avoid the appearance of barriers or the fear of what is behind a door when it's shut.

•   Lighting that supports understanding of daytime (especially when it’s really dull outside) and nighttime.

•   Technology that helps to support the person’s independence - a dementia clock, for example, could help the person know what the day/time is so that they can orientate themselves.

•   Accessible and enjoyable outside space - for many people, this aspect of ‘home’ is more important than the building.

When ‘home’ moves

So what happens if there is no option and ‘home’ has to change? Care homes are often seen as prisons, but your own home can equally become a place of confinement, which has led me firmly to the belief that what imprisons people with dementia isn’t necessarily buildings, but the attitudes of those around them.

That really gets to the heart of why I talk about that Alzheimer’s Society statistic so much. I want staff to be challenged to think about what home really means for each person they are supporting, and to think about anything and everything that we can do to make the person’s current circumstances, which may not be of their choosing (my dad certainly wouldn’t have chosen to go into a care home) the very best they can be.

This can happen in a variety of different ways, but broadly speaking it’s about maximising the person’s choice and control all day every day, promoting and nurturing their independence, understanding and really embracing the person’s life story in a myriad of guises, and perhaps most significantly of all, validating the person’s sense of what their home is, why it’s important to them, and getting as close as possible to providing the happy feelings they associate with their concept of home.

The ultimate interpretation of ‘home’

That last point is vital, because for everything that I’ve said about the building and contents that we call ‘home’, it’s the feelings and emotions that come from the people a home is shared with (a childhood with parents and maybe siblings, a young adult life as a newlywed, or the home where a person brought up their children) that make up the ‘sweetness’ in the title of this blog.

In those bygone days the building itself wasn’t necessarily the safety and security, that came from the person’s mum and dad, husband or wife. The comfort came from the cuddles and love that was shared. The fun came from the laughter and mess of a young family. The personalisation came from choosing furnishings and decorating as a young couple, and the freedom to be ourselves came from being completely at ease with those the home was shared with.

Whilst that ‘sweetness’ may be associated with many years ago, we can ensure it is never airbrushed out of the person’s life today. After all, would you want your ‘home’ lost forever?

Until next time...

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Why culture matters in dementia care

Last month saw the launch of the Dementia Action Alliance’s (DAA) ‘From Seldom Heard to Seen and Heard’ Campaign. The campaign focuses on people living with dementia and their families from six communities who are often marginalised from services and support: Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender + (LGBT), Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME), Young onset dementia, The prison population, People living in rural communities and People with learning disabilities.

I’m a national member of the DAA, and proud to have worked with the team in developing this campaign, mostly by utilizing my extensive knowledge and experience of working with people who have a learning disability and dementia. For this blog post, however, I want to think about the BAME population, and with Brexit on the horizon, anyone born outside of the UK who is now ageing in the UK and living with dementia.

When I contributed to the Jessica Kingsley book ‘Culture, Dementia and Ethnicity’ I wrote about my experiences of my dad’s relationship with his Filipino key worker. Many others from BAME backgrounds wrote about their own experiences, some hugely challenging due to cultural differences, the expectations and assumptions that are made by different communities, and the sheer dearth of culturally-appropriate services.

In my dad’s 9 years in care homes, I only ever met one lady who was from a BAME background. Granted dad was living in the home counties rather than an inner city, but with a significant Asian population in the local town, it struck me as strange that more people with Indian or Pakistani heritage didn’t live there too, particularly as the staff team was very multicultural.

Of course when I began the work I do now, I heard all those stereotyped viewpoints that Asian families ‘look after their own’ - indeed, just nine days after I began my D4Dementia blog, I read a blog published on The Age Page by guest blogger Manjit Nijjar, recalling her experiences as a carer to her father. The blog completely drew me in as Manjit described the struggles she faced, and the prevalence of the notion that Asian families ‘look after their own’.

Keeping health problems ‘behind closed doors’ and ‘looking after your own’ are viewpoints that make dangerous assumptions that a family is able to cope – Manjit wasn’t coping, and in the 5+ years since her blog was published, I’m sure many other carers from BAME backgrounds have had similar experiences. Diagnosis rates within BAME communities don’t reflect the likely prevalence in the population, suggesting that many families either don’t want to seek help when they notice changes in a loved one’s health, or are believing stigmatised viewpoints about dementia ‘madness’ which leave them too ashamed to seek help.

Even with a large extended family, it isn’t a given that family carers will have the skills and abilities to care for a loved one with dementia, and if they aren’t accessing mainstream services, they may never receive any professional support. Package all of that up together and you are likely to find significant numbers of isolated BAME families struggling to cope against pressure from their community to just soldier on, despite limited or non-existent knowledge of dementia.

Then, of course, there are the challenges faced by the services people from BAME backgrounds do access. From the time I spent with the Asian lady in my dad’s care home, it was clear staff had little understanding of how to support her. She’d reverted to her childhood language that few people (including her family) understood, was disorientated in an unfamiliar, very British-style environment, and attitudes to supporting her cultural needs around food (Halal) were at times shocking.

We know that dementia care for those born in this country has many challenges. For those born overseas, however, whose early memories and emotions are attached to a different land, living in another culture greatly reduces the chances of living well unless services are very mindful of the needs of those individuals and their families, most notably:

Language: As with the Asian lady in my dad’s care home, many people from BAME backgrounds who develop dementia may revert to using a language they learnt in their childhood. As with all language challenges, however, it may not be a simple case of using different words - the words, letters and sounds can become muddled, no matter what the language is that the person is trying to communicate in. Looking beyond verbal communication to aspects like body language and gestures may be more helpful than trying to decipher words and phrases.

Environment: One of the most powerful recent testimonies I’ve heard regarding supporting a person from a BAME background who is living with dementia came on a BBC Radio 5 Live phone-in programme last month (sadly no longer available on iPlayer), where a gentleman described supporting his father during his years with dementia, and a particularly poignant trip to Pakistan to enable his father to see family and friends he’d grown up with and visit places that were important to him. He described his father’s joy, and listening to his story it was clear that for those few short weeks his father truly felt he’d returned home - he was living well.

The son went on to describe the great comfort those memories give him now his father has died, and although I’m not suggesting families or care providers can all facilitate holidays to homelands for every BAME person who is living with dementia, there is some really important learning here about recreating familiar environments (including colours and fabrics, and sensory elements like smells and sounds) maintaining connections with family members and friends (through technology like Skype), and really investing time and effort in life story work.

Customs: These can be anything, from religious practices to the way the person structures their day. Some elements, like prayer time, may be very important, and there may be sacred elements to the person’s life, and their end-of-life wishes, that need to be understood and carefully adhered to.

Preferences: Again, the spectrum here is huge, anything from the way the person dresses to the food they eat, the occupations and activities they wish to take part in, and potentially who they want to spend their time with. Whilst we may actively encourage multicultural living, it isn’t something everyone feels comfortable with, particularly when single men and women are mixing together in communal areas.

When thinking about both customs and preferences, it’s important to remember that for every custom or preference that is vital to one individual, another person living with dementia may wish to discard some or all of these through their own choice. Being non-judgmental and mindful of choice and control is vital in supporting the person effectively. Just because a person has dementia it doesn’t make their choices, whatever they may be, any less relevant.

If all health and care services can become more culturally aware, and in turn reap the benefits of that (both for the BAME individuals they support and for everyone else though learning about and celebrating other cultures) it will represent a really important step in improving the lives of people from BAME backgrounds who are living with dementia and their families.

Until next time...

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