Aged Care Insite Issue 107 | Jun-Jul 2018 | Page 18

practical living Lost and found Alert system proposed for people with dementia who go missing. Margie MacAndrew interviewed by Dallas Bastian population with dementia being similar. “We think it could be very effective.” Aged Care Insite asked MacAndrew how international Silver Alert systems work and spoke with her about balancing autonomy with safety. ACI: How do Silver Alert systems work in the US, and why should Australia look at adopting a similar system? A ustralian academics are calling for a Silver Alert system to help locate people with dementia who are reported lost. Silver Alert systems, which are similar to the Amber variety used for missing children, operate in 18 US states. When a person with dementia or cognitive impairment is reported lost, media outlets, law enforcement units and departments of transport help spread the message. Dr Margie MacAndrew, from the QUT-based Dementia Centre for Research Collaboration: Carers and Consumers, said not all people with dementia who wander become lost, but they are much more likely to than their peers who do not have dementia. A study by MacAndrew and her research team, published in the Australasian Journal on Ageing, examined news articles published between 2011 and 2015 reporting on a missing person who had dementia. In that time, there were 130 missing person cases, of which only 71 per cent were resolved with the person reported as found. Just under two-thirds of those who were found were well, while 19 were injured and 19 deceased. MacAndrew said there is currently no Australian equivalent to the US Silver Alert system, despite the proportion of the 16 agedcareinsite.com.au MM: There’s not a lot of evidence to tell us what the efficacy of the Silver Alert system is in America, even though it has been adopted across 18 states. Over there, if a person with dementia or cognitive impairment goes missing, a broad alert is put up, very similar to our Amber alert. In Scotland, there’s another system. It’s called the Purple Alert, and it’s linked to an app that stores vital information about the person with dementia. If the person becomes lost, the app broadcasts its information to the larger population. The underlying function of both these systems is that a very vast and large announcement is put out, so that you have more eyes looking for this person, which increases your possibility of finding them in as fast a time as possible. We’ll be looking at all the methods being used at the moment internationally, and we’re going to be talking to the search and rescue unit, as well as people with dementia and their carers, to try and find them a system that will be effective in Australia. You said while there was an argument for the health benefits of wandering, including exercise and social interaction, it can become a risky behaviour when it goes beyond safe limits. So, when does wandering threaten a person’s health and wellbeing? The characteristics of wandering include not just the fact that they’re more at risk of becoming lost, but also very repetitive and frequent walking. So, they walk much further than anyone