This morning I spoke at a conference on the importance of knowing the person. My audience was predominately social care providers. My remit was to focus on real lives, drawing on my experiences of care in terms of the importance…
How dementia and personality interact
We talk A LOT in dementia care about how dementia changes a person. Often it’s distilled down into very negative language, and bracketed as ‘challenging behaviour’ (a phrase I dislike immensely). Yet, the spectrum of change is immense, very personal…
Missing the morning chorus – Life with hearing loss
Hearing is one of the senses that I believe many people take for granted. I think the general assumption most of us make is that we are hearing everything, or at least everything we think we need to hear, and that…
Deprivation and dementia
When you consider the experience of living with dementia, I think it’s fair to say that if you are a wealthy person living in a leafy, affluent, secure location your experience of life with dementia will be different to a person…
Life story work – The gift that keeps on giving
One of the loveliest aspects of becoming a parent has been taking our daughter on various trips to meet her extended family. On one such trip we were given a gift, not of a teddy or a baby outfit, but…
