practical living
Have dementia, will travel
Queensland academics are working towards creating dementia-friendly tourist destinations.
Maria O’ Reilly interviewed By Dallas Bastian
A city on Queensland’ s subtropical central coast is working to make a difference to the travel experiences of people with dementia.
CQUniversity occupational therapy academic Dr Maria O’ Reilly, alongside colleagues from CQUni, QUT and the University of Queensland, has been working with Bundaberg Regional Council and local transport services to make the region a dementia-friendly tourist destination.
The research team recently opened a survey to anyone who works with passengers at the Bundaberg airport and railway station, or for local bus or taxi services, to hear about their approach to providing services to passengers who may have dementia or confusion.
The results will complement focus groups with people with dementia and their care partners.
O’ Reilly said:“ The project findings will increase our understanding of issues for regional travellers with dementia, grow Bundaberg’ s reputation as a tourist destination, and form the foundation for future developments for dementia-friendly travel in Bundaberg.” Aged Care Insite spoke with O’ Reilly to find out what goes into ensuring a town is dementia-friendly and what changes are already underway.
ACI: What have been some of the first steps taken to make the Bundaberg region a dementia-friendly travel destination? MOR: Well, it starts with the work I did in Brisbane before I moved up to Bundaberg. I worked with Brisbane Airport over a number of years to get it endorsed as Australia’ s first dementia-friendly airport. We worked with them looking at the environment and staff knowledge, and also helping to inform passengers. To help guide them through the airport to make it less of a difficult experience. When I first moved up to Bundaberg I can remember flying into the airport and looking around thinking, it wouldn’ t be very hard to make this dementia friendly and accessible, because it’ s a very different airport to the large metropolitan airports like Brisbane. It’ s small and more contained.
Also, as I moved up to Bundaberg and looked around the region, I realised it’ s got a lot of great things going for it as a tourist destination, and it’ s also again quite contained – it’ s a flat area. So the wheels started turning in my head and I thought, well, wouldn’ t it be great to work within Bundaberg to really make it accessible to people with dementia, so they would have a place that they knew they could go and have a good experience.
We started with a little bit of money thrown into a grant from the university, and I began talking with the council – who run the airport and are very keen about improving accessibility within Bundaberg in general for all the people. I also started talking with the railways, because a lot of older people travel into the region on the train.
At the moment, we’ re at the exploratory stage, just looking at what the situation is right now. That’ s why we’ re surveying. We are using a survey similar to the one I used in my air travel research in Brisbane, asking transport workers about their experiences with people who possibly had dementia: What sort of things were difficult for the passenger? How were they able to manage the situation? How confident did they feel in helping people with dementia through their travel experience?
18 agedcareinsite. com. au