Thursday 24 May 2018

Action for dementia care and support - Living with dementia

Welcome to the fourth of my five blog posts for UK Dementia Action Week 2018 (DAW2018)

This year Dementia Awareness Week is renamed Dementia Action Week to reflect the need for action for people affected by dementia rather than only focusing on awareness.

In this spirit, I’m sharing the ‘Key Messages’ from my dementia care and support training modules. The training, devised entirely by me and heavily based on personal experiences from my dad's life with dementia and the many other people I've met who are living with dementia, is something I've delivered to numerous frontline social care staff as a standalone learning experience or to supplement the bespoke training and mentoring that I provide to individual services and organisations.

I've never shared these materials online before, and I'm hoping by doing so now I will inspire positive action amongst health and social care providers who are supporting people living with dementia and their families.

Day 4: Living with dementia

My fourth module is called ‘Living with dementia' and covers: 
  • ‘Living with dementia’, ‘Living well’ and ‘Living better’
  • An asset-based approach
  • Working side-by-side with the person
  • Independence, choice and control
  • Risk and disagreement
  • The empowerment movement
  • Occupation, activity and lifelong learning 
  • Social connectivity and community life
  • Day-to-day living
  • Markers of living well and advice from a person living with dementia
  • Key staff skills
  • Human Rights and the Mental Capacity Act 
It concludes with:
Key Messages for 'Living with dementia'
For me these key messages, whilst very basic to many of us, are something every person providing care and support for anyone affected by dementia should live and breathe by.

Of course, there is so much more to what is in a 3-hour training session than I could convey in a short blog, but to give you a flavour of what this is like in 'real life' the module is the start of opening up conversations about everything that goes into supporting a person to live as well as possible with their dementia. 

Everything I do asks learners to put themselves into the shoes of the person, so in this module learners think about how to support a person to live as well as possible in lots of everyday situations, and use 'real life' scenarios to identify, support and work with the person to maintain their skills.
**ACTION FOR HEALTH AND SOCIAL CARE PROVIDERS**
PLEASE PRINT THE KEY MESSAGES IMAGE ABOVE AND PIN IT ONTO A NOTICEBOARD THAT ALL OF YOUR STAFF CAN SEE.

For more information on my training and mentoring consultancy work, please see my website: http://www.bethbritton.com.

Tomorrow (25 May 2018) I will look at 'Changes associated with dementia'.

Until then...
Beth x







You can follow me on Twitter: @bethyb1886

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