Our carers provide you with specialised dementia care at home. Your loved ones will be looked after by carers with experience working and supporting people living with dementia and know how to adapt to the condition's changing nature. Read our short dementia guide below and contact us on 0208 886 0686 if we can help in anyway.
We are a dementia friendly organisation and we deliver the Alzheimer's Society's free 45 minute-1hour long Dementia Friends information session. This session takes a very positive view of dealing with dementia. One of it's key 5 messages is that it is possible to live well with dementia. We also strongly align to one of the key elements of the campaign to change the way people talk about dementia and changing from the use of the term 'dementia sufferer' to 'person living with dementia'. We regularly deliver the free Dementia Friends session and can also deliver it 1:1 to family members or to whole family groups.
Previous conditions covered:
Home Care Guide - Conditions - Episode 1 - Multiple Sclerosis
Home Care Guide - Conditions - Episode 2 - Dementia
Home Care Guide - Conditions - Episode 3 - Diabetes
Home Care Guide - Conditions - Episode 4 - Alzheimer's
Home Care Guide - Conditions - Episode 5 - Vascular Dementia
Home Care Guide - Conditions - Episode 6 - Parkinson's
Outline
Dementia is a confusing term, it's often confused with Alzheimer's disease and other diseases. Dementia is an umbrella term that describes a set of different symptoms. It is caused when the brain is physically damaged by diseases such as Alzheimer's disease or Vascular dementia. Dementia is caused by diseases such as Alzheimer's disease, Alzheimer's is a dementia.
Symptoms
There are many different diseases that can result in dementia such as Alzheimer’s disease, Vascular dementia, Mixed dementia, Dementia with Lewy bodies, Fronto-temporal dementia (including Pick’s disease). There are also many other rarer diseases which cause dementia and make up around 5% of all dementias, these include corticobasal degeneration, progressive supranuclear palsy, HIV infection, Niemann-Pick disease type C, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD), Parkinson's disease and Huntingdon's disease.
There are lots of symptoms relating to dementia, the Alzheimer's Society has a fantastic analogy to help understand the different symptoms of dementia and how they affect the functions of the body, not just memory loss.
Imagine the brain is a series of fairy lights. Dementia can cause some of these fairy lights in the brain to start to flicker, dim and then eventually to go out. Depending on which fairy light starts to flicker, or which part of the brain is affected by dementia will then affect which bodily function will start to become affected.
Some of the symptoms of dementia are changes in mood. This can mean a person living with dementia can become frustrated, anxious, upset, sad or angry. A person living with dementia will have cognitive difficulties, such as difficulties with memory and thinking. Their ability to remember and recall things that happened more recently and remembering the day, the date or where they are will become difficult. People living with dementia may find it easier to recall events that happened further into the past than more recent ones.
Making decisions and carrying out a series of tasks such as making a cup of tea or cooking a meal may also become difficult. It may be more tricky to follow conversations or to follow and understand what is said on TV. Dementia can also affect vision which can cause problems with seeing objects or judging distances.
Other symptoms could include hallucinations, delusions or physical symptoms such as weakness, weight loss and changes in appetite or sleep.
Dementia is progressive which means it will gradually get worse, this will happen at different rates depending which disease has caused the dementia. Alzheimer's is usually more gradual, whilst Vascular dementia has a more step-like progression.
Care
There is currently a lot research being done into dementia but at this time, most of its causes cannot be cured. There are lots of support, activities and therapies that can help a person living with dementia to live well.
Lots of products exist that can assist in daily life such as anti-spill mugs, user-friendly utensils, talking or written word clocks, pill boxes and user-friendly phones. There are also new technologies incorporating the internet of things which monitor the use and also non-use of doors and electrical appliances.
Many forms of cognitive therapies exist also that can aid a person's mind and keep them independent and living well. Local services and activities that provide singing and meet-ups providing enjoyment, stimulation and social interaction are often hugely valuable and worth looking into also.