I belong to a small number of LinkedIn groups, one of which is ‘Technical Solutions for elderly and Alzheimer people’. Call me pedantic, but I can hardly wait to be one of the ‘Alzheimer people’ thus being utterly defined by the disease.
A Canadian friend who often describes things as ‘totally’ this or that, “Oh she’s so totally Alzheimer” he might be saying of me in a few years, in jest. But I digress.
Recently a post on the group stated: “Countdown to Launch. Latest technology for AT-Risk Wanderers. RF + GPS + Secure Bracelet = 30 days battery life and active protection. Contact us @ lifeprotekt.com.” *
Whilst there is little doubt that a GPS tracking bracelet is a great idea for the protection of highly vulnerable people who want to go out and may become dis-orientated or lost and might therefore be at risk; I find it feintly offensive that they are described as 'At-risk Wanderers', which seems to imply that they are merely aimless drifters and de-humanises them.
My own experience with older people with dementia (and that of a number of other much more qualified and highly regarded dementia care practitioners like Dr Graham Stokes and others) suggests that there is always a reason a person walks about or wants to go out.
They are always going somewhere – even if they may disregard such practical issues such as the weather, the appropriateness of their clothing, or find it hard to explain where or why they are going – and even if we may find it hard to understand their motives or intentions.
As people without dementia could we not respect this and instead, try to understand the impetus for someone to go out and find a descriptor for their actions that is less negative and undignified. For example, 'independent-spirited people with dementia'. A bit of a mouthful I admit, but at least it imbues their actions with some sense of who they are as people, rather than what disease they’ve got, for isn’t that what they are expressing?
We were asked to remove my mother from one care home when she went out on one occasion and was found, bewildered, in the local newsagent. What the staff failed to recognise was the woman my mother was – a woman who had gone shopping for her family nearly every day for some sixty years. “I’m just popping out to Alldays” I can hear her calling out to us, “I need more butter (or whatever) for the pudding…”.
Had she ‘wandered’ out of the care home? Very unlikely. She had probably gone out on some personal mission to buy something, as she had done so regularly for so many decades. The fact that the care home was many miles from where our family home had been, or that she had no money in her ever-present handbag to buy anything, and wasn’t going to be cooking anything was an irrelevance.
I understood the home's concern for her wellbeing. As an active family member, I suggested setting up a quasi-shop in the home’s large reception area for the benefit of all the women in the home like my mother, for whom shopping had been a daily habit and offered to help create it. Within a couple of months my mother was out again. This time it was an EMI unit with a mystifying keypad entry system which prevented her leaving unaccompanied. No care home should be a jail should it?
Earlier this week I was at the fantastic Age Cymru annual conference, running a reminiscence and life story workshop. A care home manager told a heart-warming story about one of their residents with dementia, who was constantly trying to go out in the garden all the time. The usual risk assessment process kicked in. But they also explored his personal history and found out about his life. It was no surprise to discover that he had been a keen gardener, that his greenhouse had been his private haven.
They wanted to give him freedom but to ensure that he was safe. As, or perhaps more importantly, they wanted to give him a better quality of life. Through a stepped process over a period of time, they facilitated his going out, first, accompanied by a member of staff, then after a while, watching him at a distance from within, then they asked his family if they could move his old greenhouse from his family home into their garden. Finally they taught him the keypad code so that he could come and go as he pleased. Would he return they wondered? Guess what – he did – and that’s what he’s been doing since.
Of course, sometimes he needs help to understand that going out in freezing temperatures or pouring rain is not such a good idea, so it isn’t always easy. But like I say, no care home should be a jail, should it?
People with dementia who are said to ‘wander’ are always going somewhere and it behoves us as carers to try to understand where they might be going and why – and then to adapt the environment to deliver more towards what they are seeking and need to have a happy, fulfilled life. Why? Because that is proper care.
(Rant over!)
* They could really use some re-writing on their site. Now they know where I can be found...
I belong to a small number of LinkedIn groups, one of which is ‘Technical Solutions for elderly and Alzheimer people’. Call me pedantic, but I can hardly wait to be one of the ‘Alzheimer people’ thus being utterly defined by the disease.
A Canadian friend who often describes things as ‘totally’ this or that, “Oh she’s so totally Alzheimer” he might be saying of me in a few years, in jest. But I digress.
Recently a post on the group stated: “Countdown to Launch. Latest technology for AT-Risk Wanderers. RF + GPS + Secure Bracelet = 30 days battery life and active protection. Contact us @ lifeprotekt.com.” *
Whilst there is little doubt that a GPS tracking bracelet is a great idea for the protection of highly vulnerable people who want to go out and may become dis-orientated or lost and might therefore be at risk; I find it feintly offensive that they are described as 'At-risk Wanderers', which seems to imply that they are merely aimless drifters and de-humanises them.
My own experience with older people with dementia (and that of a number of other much more qualified and highly regarded dementia care practitioners like Dr Graham Stokes and others) suggests that there is always a reason a person walks about or wants to go out.
They are always going somewhere – even if they may disregard such practical issues such as the weather, the appropriateness of their clothing, or find it hard to explain where or why they are going – and even if we may find it hard to understand their motives or intentions.
As people without dementia could we not respect this and instead, try to understand the impetus for someone to go out and find a descriptor for their actions that is less negative and undignified. For example, 'independent-spirited people with dementia'. A bit of a mouthful I admit, but at least it imbues their actions with some sense of who they are as people, rather than what disease they’ve got, for isn’t that what they are expressing?
We were asked to remove my mother from one care home when she went out on one occasion and was found, bewildered, in the local newsagent. What the staff failed to recognise was the woman my mother was – a woman who had gone shopping for her family nearly every day for some sixty years. “I’m just popping out to Alldays” I can hear her calling out to us, “I need more butter (or whatever) for the pudding…”.
Had she ‘wandered’ out of the care home? Very unlikely. She had probably gone out on some personal mission to buy something, as she had done so regularly for so many decades. The fact that the care home was many miles from where our family home had been, or that she had no money in her ever-present handbag to buy anything, and wasn’t going to be cooking anything was an irrelevance.
I understood the home's concern for her wellbeing. As an active family member, I suggested setting up a quasi-shop in the home’s large reception area for the benefit of all the women in the home like my mother, for whom shopping had been a daily habit and offered to help create it. Within a couple of months my mother was out again. This time it was an EMI unit with a mystifying keypad entry system which prevented her leaving unaccompanied. No care home should be a jail should it?
Earlier this week I was at the fantastic Age Cymru annual conference, running a reminiscence and life story workshop. A care home manager told a heart-warming story about one of their residents with dementia, who was constantly trying to go out in the garden all the time. The usual risk assessment process kicked in. But they also explored his personal history and found out about his life. It was no surprise to discover that he had been a keen gardener, that his greenhouse had been his private haven.
They wanted to give him freedom but to ensure that he was safe. As, or perhaps more importantly, they wanted to give him a better quality of life. Through a stepped process over a period of time, they facilitated his going out, first, accompanied by a member of staff, then after a while, watching him at a distance from within, then they asked his family if they could move his old greenhouse from his family home into their garden. Finally they taught him the keypad code so that he could come and go as he pleased. Would he return they wondered? Guess what – he did – and that’s what he’s been doing since.
Of course, sometimes he needs help to understand that going out in freezing temperatures or pouring rain is not such a good idea, so it isn’t always easy. But like I say, no care home should be a jail, should it?
People with dementia who are said to ‘wander’ are always going somewhere and it behoves us as carers to try to understand where they might be going and why – and then to adapt the environment to deliver more towards what they are seeking and need to have a happy, fulfilled life. Why? Because that is proper care.
(Rant over!)
* They could really use some re-writing on their site. Now they know where I can be found...