It is with great pleasure that I invite you to attend our 7th
International conference on caring for people with dementia.
The purpose of this conference is to stimulate discussion on
the gaps in our services and to offer ideas on how to fill them.
It will begin with an invitation to look closely at ‘person centred
care’ and to decide whether or not it has a real place in our
services or has fallen to the status of a platitude, useful for
funding applications but little else. If it doesn’t have a real place
then what will we fill that gap with?
The conference will continue with explorations of gaps in
aboriginal services, services for younger people and people with
developmental disability, services for people with dementia who
are dying and gaps in our training and recruitment of nurses
and other professionals. The contribution of psychiatrists and
psychologists will be discussed with the intention of finding
practical ways to make use of these expensive and rare
resources.
In addition the presentations and workshops will be providing
information on developments in psycho-social therapies,
environmental design, assistive technologies, models of care,
nutrition, communication, creative therapies and ways to
improve the front line assessment and diagnostic activities
of GPs.
The underlying theme of the conference is the maintenance of
the passion that has given Australia the lead in the provision of
services to people with dementia. The speakers from Canada,
the UK, Japan and the US will help us to put our services into
an international context and to draw from them a realistic view
of the progress we have made. By the end of the conference
I anticipate that we will have a clear idea of where we want to
go next and have the enthusiasm to get there.
I hope you will join us.
Best wishes
Richard Fleming
Director
Dementia Services Development Centre
Hammond Care |
Professor Brooker leads on dementia care practice development and knowledge transfer within the Bradford Dementia Group. She is a clinical psychologist who has over twenty–five years of experience working in clinical, academic and managerial posts in services for older people. Professor Brooker has travelled worldwide working with organisations to implement person-centred care for people with dementia. Her on-going research in supporting older people with mental health problems in extra care housing has led to the development of the Enriched Opportunities Programme. Her work with CSCI (Commission for Social Care Inspection) has culminated in a new observational method and training for inspection staff reviewing care homes. Professor Brooker’s recent book on Person Centred Dementia Care has redefined and revitalised the meaning of this much used term.
