Introduction to Dementia Rehabilitation: This free course aims to raise awareness, change attitudes, and present evidence for the need and provision of rehabilitation as part of post diagnostic care for all people with dementia and their care partners. It is suitable for a mixed audience, including health care professionals, peopel living with dementia, care partners…
For those who are new to my website or long time readers, todays blog is about a survey which is part of the ADEPT study. It emerged from a group of people keen to improve environmental design to ensure accessibility for ALL people with dementia. Many are members of the Dementia Alliance International Environmental Design Special…
I’m sharing some exciting news about the next chapter in the life of the Dignity Manifesto of Design for People Living with Dementia. Since its inception, the Manifesto has sought to set out clear values and design principles that uphold the dignity, autonomy, and wellbeing of people living with dementia. It grew from the foundations…
Image source: https://www.monash.edu/medicine/national-centre-for-healthy-ageing/living-labs/Improving-access-to-rehabilitation-for-people-with-dementia The right to rehabilitation of everyone, including people with dementia is one of my pet topics, and anyone who’s followed me here for a while will know I’ve been writing about and campaigning for dementia to be supported as a condition causing disabilities, and for proactive rehabilitation immediately after diagnosis for all…
Dementia is not in itself a disability, but reframing the symptoms of dementia as disabilities aligns directly with a rights-based approach under the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), rather than just treating them as biomedical “deficits”. This graphic provides a visual example of some of the disabilities people acquire as a result of…
In the world of mental illness, and of dementia, people are systematically locked up i.e. physically restrained, and chemically restrained. If you have dementia, even worse, you are segregated from all others, remembering of course, the only others this is done to without consent, are convicted criminals. Check out not only the video, but the…
Recently, I started to become interested in the work of a psychologist, Dr Roger McFillin, and after listening to multiple Radically Genuine podcasts and interviews and reading his posts on social media, decided to join the Conscious Clinician Collective. This initiative is open to everyone, not only clinicians. That is, anyone with an interest in…
My usual effervescence and optimism disappeared momentarily when I learned last week that the Australian Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) has approved the use of donanemab in Australia. Evidence is weak for benefits, but high for serious side effects, some even causing death. It is only for people in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease. And…
It is time to write the second Edition of this book, which will be an Audiobook, especially as this first edition needs an update. I’m looking forward to being able to launch the audiobook, but especially to updating a few of the chapters in my first book, as not only have my opinions changed since…
My inner rage, sometimes quiet, sometimes more obvious and loud – against the persistent status quo, particularly in the field of dementia ‘care’ is not meant to be personal, not to any individual, or to any organisation. I am well aware and often say in presentations that almost everyone I know goes to work (paid…
Chapter Review by Elizabeth Deane McCarthy, Student of Ageing and Public Policy, 2024 “Coming from a background of Mental Health Nursing (Training completed during the COVID pandemic) with a special interest in Dementia, I picked up Ageing of the Oppressed and couldn’t put it down. Kate Swaffer’s chapter ‘About Us Without All Of Us: The…
The Global Alliance For The Rights of Older Persons (GAROP) has launched a petition urging governments to support the drafting of a United Nations (UN) convention on the rights of older people. Please consider joining me in supporting GAROP to collect as many signatures as possible. From the GAROP campaign page: “This year is the…
As persistently found in past blogs, I don’t (and defintiely no longer) blog regularly! Anyway, whilst searching for one specific to living, not only dying from dementia, I started reading old blogs, and decided to post this one today, from my Living Beyond Dementia site. We are all born with a death sentence, so there…
Two webinars on deinstitutionalisation: “Ordinary lives” Todays post is to highlight two important webinars being hosted by the European Network on Independent Living, coming up soon. The United Nations Deinstitutionalisation Guidelines released in 2022 refer to all people with disabilties, which therefore includes people living with dementia. People with dementia are not only locked inside…
On behalf of Linda and myself, I’m providing an update on our research project and provide links to our project resources, as well as a recording of the launch event. I was privileged to work as an Associate Investigator on this project with Dr Linda Steele. Our latest post, Launches, Publications, and Advocacy: A Busy Time…
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