Below are some screen shots of some positive comments via email and twitter following an article I co authored with my dear friend and colleague Shibley Rahman. If I was able to, I would have embedded the twitter comments, but alas, even after quite a few attempts, I gave up! So far, we have only had one piece of active and open negative feedback, but as always, not agreeing with the ‘majority’ can cause others to become defensive. After all, our article is only another way of looking at the dementia friendly communities ‘movement’. Davids comment on Twitter resonates with what I have believed about these campaigns for more than six years:

“Reading it was like a drink of clear water after too much fizzy carbonated gunk.” 

A young friend is currently writing a guest blog for me, curiously about Alpacas and sheep, which I hope to add to my blog soon. Apparently it is very relevant to the few of us who dare to challenge things, and stand up and speak out as activists.

Our article, Assets based approaches to dementia friendly communities, first Published January 4, 2018 in Dementia, vol. 17, 2: pp. 131-137, begins with this introduction:

Whilst it is possible that dementia-friendly communities simply evolve unilaterally due to various uncontrollable forces, a serious consideration, we feel, should be made to enquire whether dementia-friendly communities actually aim to promote the health of people with dementia and care partners. It is argued that an influence of the biomedical approach has been accompanied by an overly negative discourse, with a focus on symptoms, deficits and emotionally charged metaphors about dementia that have influenced the overall public perception (Zeilig, 2014). This focus may not be totally beneficial, however. In anaesthetics, ‘fixation errors’ occur when the practitioner concentrates solely upon a single aspect of a case to the detriment of other more relevant aspects (Fioratou, Flin, & Glavin, 2010). Fixation errors, indeed, are well recognised in anaesthetic practice and can contribute significantly to morbidity and mortality. With shifting the focus on how businesses might win more customers by being ‘dementia friendly’, securing a competitive advantage through ‘nudging’, other promising avenues of dementia-friendly communities, such as implementing rights enshrined within the UN Convention of Rights of People with Disabilities (CRPD) and other Conventions, might not be given proper prominence.

Thanks for the feedback…