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