Caring for Dementia

The impact of dementia

Living with dementia, whether personally, as a caregiver to a loved one, or even a staff member in a facility can present unique challenges and uncertainties. We always want to provide the best care for our loved ones and residents, and understand the diagnosis the best we can. At Caring For Dementia, we understand these difficulties, and are committed to providing compassionate support and valuable resources to individuals and families facing a dementia diagnosis. With over 12 years personal experience as a live-in carer for someone with dementia, and 13 years professional experience as a recreation therapist and behaviour support services manager in long-term care facilities, we are here to help you with practical and easy to understand recommendations. Here are some ways Caring for Dementia can help support you!

Virtual Care Sessions:

In our virtual care sessions, we offer personalized support from experienced behavioural support specialists. Our approach is built on evidence-based practices and informed by years of hands-on experience.

We firmly believe that every behaviour has a story to tell, and our sessions are dedicated to uncovering the underlying emotions and needs behind these behaviours. By understanding an unmet need, which may be hidden or not so obvious in some cases, we can respond in a way that encourages trust, compassion and connection.

Effective communication is at the core of our approach. Depending on the type of impairment and affected area of the brain, we tailor our communication techniques to ensure clarity and understanding for both yourself and the person you are caring for.

We will provide you a 3 day behaviour tracking tool to complete along with your welcome package. It’s important that this is filled out accurately and completely to properly record the frequency and duration of the behaviour. We interpret the results of the assessment to understand patterns and trends to the behaviours, so we can further provide personalized strategies that will meet the needs of your loved one or person you care for.

Whether it’s managing behavioural symptoms, understanding resistance to activities of daily living, navigating communication challenges, or assisting with care planning, our sessions provide practical strategies and person-centered guidance. Our goal is to empower caregivers by providing knowledge, experience, resources and support required to effectively care for someone with dementia.

Care Planning:

Understanding the care needs of a loved one with dementia can be overwhelming when there are so many aspects to consider: personal hygiene, toileting, effective communication, nutrition, routines, activities and hobbies. This especially can be difficult for people who are inconsistent caregivers, such as facility staff in respite care, home care staff, or family and friends.

We firmly believe that each person with dementia (whether in a facility or living at home) should have an up-to-date care plan to ensure the person caring for the individual knows exactly how to provide person-centered care.

– Caring For Dementia

Our care planning services are designed to ease this burden, offering comprehensive goals and interventions to address different focus areas. When provided with a detailed and organized plan of care, it is much easier for someone to effectively provide person-centered care.

Your personalized care plan will be designed by our behaviour support specialist, with over 10 years of service crafting detailed and emotion-focused care plans for long-term care facilities, and patients in hospital.

Our care plans have seven different focus areas, including:

• personal hygiene
• mobility
• communication
• nutrition and hydration
• behaviour support
• day and night routines
• activities and hobbies.

Each area is carefully considered and addressed to ensure holistic care that meets the individual’s specific needs. Please note that Caring For Dementia does not provide medical advice therefore we did not include a medical/medication section. Please ensure you are directly discussing this with staff/family/friends.

In addition to these focus areas, we provide educational enhancements, offering general strategies that typically work well with people living with dementia. These enhancements serve to complete our care plans, equipping families and caregivers with valuable insights and tools to ensure confidence in caregiving.

Support Groups:

Finding strength in community is an important goal in our virtual (fully online) support groups. Led by our behaviour support specialist, we emphasize that the emotions that come along with caregiving are valid and real. We provide support through various coping strategies to help ease stress, and as a collective brainstorm ideas that may help your situation. Every third Monday of the month, from 8 to 9 PM Atlantic Standard Time, our virtual doors open to anyone seeking understanding, support and perhaps advice.

In our groups, participants share their experiences, seek guidance, and extend support to fellow caregivers who may be in similar circumstances. Whether you’re from Nova Scotia, Canada, or anywhere else in the world, as long as you convert your time zone to Atlantic Standard Time GMT (-04:00) you can join our virtual support group.

Spaces are limited to ensure that each participant receives value from the group, we will begin a waitlist for next month in the event that the support group has reached capacity. At this time we only have support groups that are English speaking, sorry for any inconvenience.

Join our support group by registering on our website here: www.caringfordementia.ca/support-groups

Blog Articles and social media:

Knowledge is power. We do our best to ensure we are providing you with accurate evidence-based material, or tried and true recommendations from our personal or professional experience. Although just examples, it’s important to note that every person and every situation is different and approaches and communication will vary amongst people.

Through engagement in our social media channels we attempt to find trends and common issues that caregivers and facility staff typically run into. We base our blog articles, examples and social media posts on the engagement and questions we receive from our followers. We want to help you and will offer as much insight as we can to assist you in your situation.

Every Monday at 9:00 AM, we release a new article, using that as our social media topic for the week. Using our Facebook Page and Instagram Page we create posts with general examples relating to the blog article topic. We take many of your questions or issues that you ask us on social media and use these to create posts with examples that will resonate with you, and others who are in similar situations. Be sure to engage or ask us questions if you require support, chances are there are 100 other people that need the same answers as you. We never disclose names in our posts and will ensure your confidentiality.

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Resources:

In addition to our virtual care sessions, care planning services, and support groups, we provide a range of resources to support individuals and families affected by dementia. These resources include PDF print outs, informational guides, and links to other trusted organizations and support services.

Access our Resources Page Here

At Caring For Dementia…

We personally understand the toll dementia can have on the individual, on the caregiver, and on the families. We understand the sacrifice given to ensure that your loved one is receiving care set to your standards. We understand the love and effort that goes into each and every single day. We understand that whatever you’ve tried and whatever you’ve done to help, you may still require support, and that’s okay. We want to build our caregivers confidence by providing them with the right knowledge and tools, whether that’s specialized recommendations through our 1:1 sessions and care planning service, our passive support through our blog and social media posts. We do our best to try and assist the people reaching out to us, and typically will respond to inquires within 1-2 business days. Please note that if you have a specific issue and are reaching out to us by social media, we may not always be able to provide the correct strategies without first understanding the person and the situation.