September 24 - Conversations that Matter: Breaking through dementia

Here at Ostrich, we’d like to extend our thanks to Laurel from 360 Forward for writing this guest blog about their new video: Conversations that Matter: Breaking through dementia. The video is a powerful film showing how to have empathetic conversational skills to understand unmet needs and build trusting relationships with people living with dementia.

As dementia progresses we see behaviour we find hard to understand and respond to. This can leave us feeling upset, confused or irritated. We must remember that most people living with dementia were once well and active, with unique characteristics and life events which ultimately shape how they cope with their changing circumstances. Their behaviour is often them desperately trying to make others understand their needs and wishes. By learning to understand the meaning behind the words and actions, we can stay calm and not react in a way that will further provoke the situation.

Conversations that Matter: Breaking through dementia is a powerful reconstruction of three real scenarios that raise awareness and demonstrate a new way of communicating more effectively at an emotional level, through the conversational skills and sensory insight needed in emotional situations between carers and people living with dementia.

Purpose:

• To gain insight into the experience of dementia.
• To use powerful dramatised vignettes to demonstrate what therapeutic conversations should look and sound like and how this connects with the individual’s past and sense of self.
• To understand the importance of knowing a person with dementia’s life story and linking this with their life and care choices.
• To teach the knowledge, skill and behaviour that underpins good communication and relationship building.

These interaction techniques originated from the psychologist Carl Rogers’ (1961) work in person-centred counselling, but, more recently have proved successful through Naomi Feil’s (1983, 1993) Validation Method, and are further emphasised through Tom Kitwood (1997) positive person work. These are complemented by best practices in person centred dementia care, and Julia Pitkin’s and Rosemary Hurtley’s 25 years of professional and personal experience working with people living with dementia. These methods help to meet the learning needs for specialist types of communication arising from the 360 Standard Framework to embed a person centred culture which is based on the forming of positive relationships amongst the person, their carer and their family for a person centred culture.

How the film works:

The film shows a series of challenging situations for nursing and carers who are faced with the realities of caring on a daily basis, and tend to work from instinct without guidelines and practical structure to help them care better, build relationships and prevent difficult and stressful situations and help them to deal with these difficulties.

The film demonstrates how empathy is a flow of interaction and signals that give a positive message to the individual by expressing warmth and feeling, conveying ‘you are important to me. I am listening. I want to understand’. Julia Pitkin. Many staff rush in to fix a situation or ‘out-guess’ what they think a person is trying to say. They find the practical side of caring, looking after people, creating a nice tidy place to live easier, because it requires less emotionally. So, can empathy and compassion be taught? If it can we require a structure to help us know how to build relationships because dementia care requires a person with emotional intelligence, kinaesthetic and interpersonal skills with a coached mind-set, once this is achieved the skills will follow. This in turn will increase the wellbeing of the person living with dementia and job satisfaction for staff or relief for family carers as they apply the principles to daily situations they face.

It is helpful to understand how different types of dementia and memory loss affect a person’s ability to communicate so we know what to expect. Once we know the individual’s character and life events we can start to work out what their behaviour might mean. This involves observing their body language carefully, associating with their feelings by putting yourself into their shoes and adjusting your listening and spoken skills accordingly, and building trusting relationships. For many of us this will be a new way of communicating, but most importantly, finding an inner calmness and not taking it personally.

More about the eight principles of a therapeutic relationship can be downloaded on the 360 Forward website.

You can check out the trailer for the new DVD on YouTube or below and the film is available to purchase here.