Dementia

Bringing into operation a group of support and mutual help for informal carers of dependent elderly people at 'Vargas' Health Centre is a necessity that cant be postponed any longer.The project which we want to carry out takes into account the welfare of both the carer and the elderly and consist of supporting the carers by listening to them, by raising their awareness about the importance of the work they do, both for the relative they look after and for society as a whole, and by teaching them to look after themselves during the caring period.

Good multi-professional care in the field of dementia is essential, so all practitioners must understand what is needed, say social care researcher Jill Manthorpe and health researcher Steve Iliffe.

Chreanne Montgomery-Smith tells the story of ‘Singing for the brain’, a music programme for people with dementia and their carers.

Objectives: Increasing attention has been paid to the needs of family members caring for a person with dementia but little has been written about the impact on the wider family. This paper was intended to see whether the need for information would stretch to those relatives living far from the patient.

Respite care is a cornerstone service for the home management of people with dementia. It is used by carers to mitigate the stress related to the demands of caring by allowing time for them to rest and do things for themselves, thus maintaining the caring relationship at home and perhaps forestalling long-term placement in a residential aged care facility. Despite numerous anecdotal reports in support of respite care, its uptake by carers of people with dementia remains relatively low.

The aim of this section of a larger study was to identify the range of cues from which pain was inferred for a sample of residents with various levels of cognitive impairment in 15 UK nursing homes. Sixty-five nursing home staff and 36 informal carers of the 113 residents were interviewed. There was extensive use of body movements, facial expressions, and verbal and vocal cues and a considerable degree of interpretation of cues was used. There was little difference between the types of cue used by formal and informal carers, although informal carers tended to identify more of all types.

Context: Study of the problems and requirements of the main caregiver providing home care for dementia patients that have resulted in the patient being institutionalised.

Objectives: To determine the reasons for placing the dementia patient in an institution.

Resources: Self-administered questionnaire of 48 questions on the patient and caregiver, including a list of complaints, given to the main caregiver. Medical questionnaire on the patient filled in by the geriatrician.

Aging baby boomers, longer life spans, and rising levels of Alzheimer's disease and related dementias (ADRD) will result in a caregiver crisis in the near future. The ways in which caregivers deal with stresses related to caregiving will be critical to both their own well-being and their ability to care for others. The purpose of this article is to describe the Stress-Busting Program (SBP) for family caregivers and its effectiveness. The essential components of the SBP are education, stress management, problem solving, and support delivered in a group setting for 9 weeks.

This guide considers the potential of assistive technology to contribute to the care of people with dementia in the community. It has been written by members of the ASTRID project, involving the UK, Norway, the Netherlands and Ireland. It contains an introduction to the project, an account of technology in action, discussion of how to incorporate technology in a needs assessment, how to obtain and use assistive technology, and a review of ethical issues.

Objectives: To report on the views of people with dementia who live in care homes and their family carers on aspects of design that are important to them, and discuss these in relation to developing physical care environments that respond to the wishes of people with dementia and their family carers.