Aged Care Insite Issue 100 | April-May 2017 | Seite 15

industry & policy
colleagues in Alzheimer’s Australia, a person with dementia is still
a person, and a person with dementia wants to feel valued in the
community in which they live.
That’s one of the reasons why we’re working very hard now to
create dementia-friendly communities in Australia and ultimately
a dementia-friendly Australia. That’s what we want … we want
Australia to be dementia-friendly.
Do you think that the work of groups like Alzheimer’s Australia,
as well as voices of dementia advocates like you and Kate
Swaffer, is starting to change the way dementia is viewed?
More people are realising that a diagnosis of dementia doesn’t
mean that you can’t lead a meaningful life.
Kate Swaffer is a wonderful example of that, so is Christine
Bryden. They’ve both shown a diagnosis of dementia doesn’t
stop you contributing, doesn’t stop you speaking at conferences,
doesn’t stop you writing books, doesn’t stop you – as I said –
leading a fulfilled life.
I had an email to me at Studio Ten – the show I co-host on
Ten – from a woman who had been diagnosed with younger
onset dementia, and she was really quite depressed and asked my
advice on where she might go for help and so on. I told her about
Alzheimer’s Australia Vic, I told her about some of our programs, I
told her about people like Kate Swaffer, who have shown that you
can lead a busy life, a fulfilled life. I got another note from her just
this week to say that she has taken heart and she’s now delivered
a synopsis for consideration for her to deliver at the Alzheimer’s
Australia conference in Melbourne later this year.
Similarly, I was doing some fundraising for Alzheimer’s Australia
(Qld) in February, and I ran into a guy that I’d met at a previous
Alzheimer’s Australia (Qld) function, and he said: “You changed my
life.” He has been cycling around the world and he’s going off to
speak at a conference, but until I spoke to him [the first time we
had met], he said he really thought there was nothing left for him.
He had been a schoolteacher and so he was really full of despair.
They’re little steps but they’re very positive steps and they tell
other people [what is still possible] and that’s really important.
You can see that you can still keep doing things … you just have to
rethink how you might do them.
What have been some of the biggest developments in the aged
care and community care space that we should celebrate and
what might we be celebrating too soon about?
I don’t know that we’re celebrating anything too soon, but we’re
certainly celebrating some of the advancements of technology that
now can be incorporated into residential aged care.
We’re very excited about the virtual dementia experience, for
instance, that was pioneered by Alzheimer’s Australia Vic. That’s an
experience that takes people into the world of a person living with
dementia, simulating thoughts and fears and challenges. I had a
go at some of it … it’s a really strange feeling, it’s a really unusual
feeling, we talk a lot about dementia and we meet with people with
dementia, but having a virtual reality experience gives you a much
better idea of what it’s like to be a person living with dementia.
That’s a breakthrough that was created to improve the knowledge
of aged care workers who are attending education classes.
We’re now using gaming technology to create sensory
experiences for people. You use a large interactive screen, and
it might take you to a forest, and it’s a forest for people with
dementia, and they can experiment with it, and they can control it
and they can change things by just waving their hands.
Again, it’s something they share with the other residents and
carers. It keeps opening up new worlds for them, it keeps showing
them that there is life, there is this fulfilled life even if you have a
dementia diagnosis.
There are a lot of new models and options for caring for people
with dementia that are being developed. [A great example is]
Hogeweyk, a village in Holland. They actually created a village
and people with dementia live within the village, and e