Dementia by June Andrews
Author:June Andrews
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Profile Books
chapter 9
Your dementia-friendly home
By ‘home’ I mean the house or apartment where you live. This can be a place that you’ve lived in for a long time, or somewhere you’ve moved to in later years, or perhaps you have moved very recently to help deal with practical problems associated with dementia. Some of the ideas in this chapter are about changes that you can make now and others are things you could consider if you were moving to a new or purpose-built place. There are suggestions that are inexpensive and some that are fairly major, and you would not always do everything described here. For example, you would not change all the floor coverings in your house on the basis of this advice, but if you had decided to change them anyway you might consider these ideas when choosing your flooring.
My husband is a cabinetmaker and builder and although neither of us has dementia or anything like it, we make dementia-friendly decisions whenever we are making any change in our house. It all looks really nice, not like some of the ugly adaptations that you see. So even if he passes away before me, and I get dementia, he’ll have made sure that I can stay in our house for longer. (Mrs C., 62)
If you or someone who lives with you has dementia you’ve got a lot on your plate. Some of the problems that occur every day can’t be avoided, but some of them can. If you sort out the avoidable problems by making adjustments in your home, you can concentrate your energies on the issues that are more difficult to resolve.
General hints
As with most of these hints, there are two routes here. In the person’s own home change as little as possible apart from increasing the light and removing hazards. Decluttering is good if you can get away with it, but be aware that the person may turn round and ask for the object today that they asked you to throw away yesterday. If the person is moving, make things dementia-friendly. To be dementia-friendly everything should be ‘obvious’ – that is, it should be traditional in design.
Remember that the person with dementia has difficulties with recall, working things out, learning new things and coping with disabilities or impairments, all of which is very stressful, so when you make any changes you have to keep this in mind.
It is fortunate if the person can stay in a familiar place for as long as possible. After a move they may wake up in the morning, having forgotten that they’ve moved, and try to get back to the old place.
If you are staying in the old place, change as little as possible. Even if you agree to throw out the old sofa, you’ll be asked the next day where it is. The only changes you should make are those which are really required for safety and security.
If you move to a new place, remember to keep everything as obvious and familiar as possible.
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