May 24, 2011Dementia

Risk Assessment and Management for Living Well with Dementia – An Interview with author Charlotte Clarke

“People with dementia continue to have decisions about them made by other people who bring to that decision their own views of safety and risk – these can be very profound decisions such as where someone will live in the future. It continues to be essential to develop services that respect the views of people living with dementia so that the care they receive is of high quality (and this is not necessarily care that is ‘risk free’).”

February 22, 2011Counselling

Reminiscence and Life Story Work – The Importance of Remembering Our Life’s Journey

“From infancy to old age, the recall of personal memories serves to establish identity, safeguard self esteem, assist communication, enhance relationships, and preserve and transmit personal, family and community history. By valuing memories people are helped to value themselves when developmental challenges, current circumstances, transitions, failing health and increasing age assail us.”

January 12, 2011July 4, 2017Autism

Rising to New Heights of Communication and Learning for Children with Autism – An Interview with Carol Spears and Vicki Turner

Carol L. Spears and Dr. Vicki L. Turner are Speech Language Pathologists, Assistive Technologists, and Alternative/ Augmentative Communication Specialists. Here, Carol and Vicki answer some…

December 21, 2010July 4, 2017Autism

Re-designing Spaces for Children with Autism to Improve Organization and Behavior

The Extreme Makeover Challenge: Room Re-Design! by Carol L. Spears and Dr. Vicki L. Turner As discussed in our book Rising to New Heights of Communication and…

November 26, 2010Social work

Good record-keeping matters: An excerpt from Jacki Pritchard’s ‘Recording Skills in Safeguarding Adults’

“We know that most workers are under extreme pressure with ever increasing workloads and there can be a reluctance to give recording the priority it deserves. Increasing workloads can be partly due to a lack of resources. It is important that people in positions of power argue for an increase in resources, but to do that arguments have to be put forward that there is a real need. Keeping good records can aid this.”

November 18, 2010Dementia

JKP authors abound at the 5th UK Dementia Congress

Last week, JKP attended the 5th UK Dementia Congress in Bournemouth. As the largest dementia-focused annual event in the UK, the congress offered an exciting…

October 29, 2010May 8, 2017Counselling

Working with Reluctant Clients in Health and Social Care – an Interview with JKP author Maggie Kindred

“One of the most important messages I would want to give to a newcomer is that your reluctant client will probably never [become a ‘willing’ client]. Why should s/he? Compliance with you and your rules is a massive victory. If you can rejoice with your clients when they are finally getting rid of you, this is very liberating. Social work and care does not change people’s personality fundamentally, it helps them function.”

October 6, 2010Arts therapies

‘Creative Care and the Capacity to Play’ – An excerpt from The Creative Arts in Dementia Care, by Jill Hayes with Sarah Povey

“In working in dementia care we need often to let ourselves become foolish, unconventional, stop making sense. I have been thrilled to meet staff who at the drop of a hat will dress up, play the guitar, sing uproariously…or who have the capacity to sit quietly with someone without an agenda. It is this joy of the crazy and the still, this lightness of being, which is refreshing and life-promoting in the work that we do. We can play with balloons, blow bubbles, doodle, improvise. We don’t have to make a finished product. By creatively and somatically being with a person we can instil a sense of safety, of physical and emotional security.”

September 22, 2010Autism

An Interview with Bo Hejlskov Elvén: Making Behaving Positively Possible for People with Autism and Other Developmental Disabilities

“Most of the methods used in changing challenging behaviours contain a degree of force or lack of respect for the choices of the service-user. My main principle is that the service-user always has the right to say ‘no’. My job is to encourage her say ‘yes’. That means that if she says ‘no’, I need to figure out what I did wrong. In that way I actually can change her behaviour by focusing on my own behaviour, not on hers.”

August 27, 2010Adoption and Fostering

Interview: Lynn Davis on her new book, A Practical Guide to Fostering Law

“Foster carers play an absolutely crucial role in the child care system. The vast majority of looked after children live in foster care. Carers are there at the sharp end, dealing 24 hours a day, 7 days a week with all of the consequences of abuse, neglect or whatever family difficulties have led children to be looked after. Yet in spite of this, in my view foster carers are underpaid and often overlooked and under-appreciated.”