Hawker

This article describes the themes emerging from the author’s anthology of personal accounts of caring for a family member or friend with dementia, ‘Telling tales about dementia’. It explains the importance of family carers and suggests that the knowledge of family carers should be actively sought by professionals delivering services, discussing the barriers of patient confidentiality, examples of important information from family carers being disregarded, and the role of family carers in monitoring care and challenging professionals when necessary.

James Feeney, Dawn John and Christina Maciejewski describe the work of the Alzheimer’s Society Cardiff Carers’ Bus

Hampshire: Alzheimer Cafe UK – a new approach to support for people with dementia and their carers – has been launched in Hampshire. Kandy Redwood explains.

Lighting Up is a project in which artists work with people who have dementia and their carers. It has been running for over two years, and is now based in three venues in Bristol and South Gloucestershire. This article describes what Lighting Up has done and learnt over that time. Lighting Up aims to ensure that sessions encourage continuity and development from one session to the next, rather than simply being one-off enjoyable events. The focus is on the quality of participants’ lives rather than the outcomes of any specific activity.

SPECAL is a person-centred approach to the care of people with dementia which could also have the potential to reduce carer stress and lead to improvements in quality of life for people with dementia and their carers. The approach prioritises meaning over detail. It has 'three golden rules' for the care: do not ask direct questions, learn from the expert by listening and discovering what is important to the person with dementia, and do not contradict. This article describes the origins and rationale of SPECAL.

Val Bunn and Caroline Baker describe a home-based respite service that carers say has made an enormous difference to their lives, and the lives of those they care for.

Changes in cooking, food preparation and eating habits may give rise to concern among relatives of people with dementia. Jill Manthorpe, Roger Watson and Anne Stimpson report on survey findings on this theme, and draw out messages for services

In the first of two articles about developing dementia services in India, Diana Kerr presents an overview of the country and describes two specific projects.

Penny Hibberd introduces an innovative idea for involving carers in higher education, and carers Caryn and Ted Bird explain how they have benefited from the approach 

Colin Barnes describes how he sets about offering communication advice to family carers of people with dementia, and the materials he has developed to help carers understand the reasons for common difficulties and strategies for more successful communication