June 30, 2010Dementia

Bob Woods on the importance of family involvement in care homes for people with dementia

“Then came the opportunity to plan a new style of dementia care home, right in the heart of the catchment area, and the positive effects on relatives’ guilt and strain were palpable. [Relatives] visited more often and felt considerably more involved. But there were tensions too; relatives were often dissatisfied with staff, and staff felt that relatives were more of a problem than the residents. It became clear that the relationship between staff and relatives needed just as much attention as that between staff and residents.”

May 5, 2010Counselling

Danuta Lipinska on person-centred counselling for people with dementia

“They considered it helpful in their quest to ‘make sense of Self’ within the context of their lives as affected by living with dementia. Making sense of Self and the world around us is an endeavour we all undertake in our own unique ways, Sometimes people will seek out the impartial, empathic listening of a professional counsellor to support them in this quest.”

December 15, 2009Social work

Rhidian Hughes: “Restraint does nothing to address the underlying causes of people’s behaviour”

“…the United States was the first country to take a long hard look at the use of restraint and to develop a number of innovative restraint reduction and eradication approaches. […] Progress in other countries has followed, although at a different pace. Arguably the UK has lagged behind other countries in the attention afforded to this topic and the lack of domestic research has been criticised, a point made in the book…”