Aged Care Insite Issue 106 | Apr-May 2018 | Page 26

clinical focus International best practice in dementia care Seminar brings together experts from around the country to discuss innovations in dementia care. By Dallas Bastian and Richard Garfield C hange the narrative about aged care. Take off the shackles. Polish the diamonds. These were some of the key messages that speakers at Aged Care Insite’s International Best Practice in Dementia Care seminar hoped attendees took away from the event. Opening the presentations, Dementia Australia chief executive Maree McCabe said the work in the dementia care space around the world is challenging, rewarding and inspiring. “Australia is in a position to contribute and influence so much of what is happening and what is needed,” she told attendees. However, she added, there is more work to be done to best support people living with dementia, their families and carers. McCabe said each group must be included at every level of the system, not just on the receiving end as the resident or the patient, and also spoke of the need for the entrenchment 24 agedcareinsite.com.au of ‘person‑centred care’ thinking and to bring about a transformational shift in culture within aged care. Professor Henry Brodaty, from the Centre for Healthy Brain Ageing, said there are many examples of good and bad residential aged care but the sector as a whole gets bad press. “We never see good news stories,” Brodaty said. “There’s a lot happening in residential aged care. It’s a matter of being creative, of bringing the community into the home and the people in the home into the community.” He walked attendees through the SMILE study focusing on humour therapy, which resulted in a 20 per cent reduction in agitation among residents, and zeroed in on the idea of group homes, which typically see fewer than 12 people living within a single site, as well as dementia villages, including De Hogeweyk. The village was pioneered in the Netherlands and its successes and failures informed some of what we will see when Glenview Community Services’ Korongee village opens in Tasmania in 2019. Glenview chief executive Lucy O’Flaherty discussed the provider’s desire to also pass on the research, learnings and mistakes of its journey to develop Korongee. She also spoke of