This session will focus on strategies to start the first conversations and follow up plans when difficult situations lie ahead. The goal is to create options and rehearse prior to beginning an interaction that could well lead to refusals or emotional distress. Issues to be covered will include transportation, health and medications, housing, using care support, and firearms.

Discussion will include issues surrounding:

• Driving
• Medication Management
• Financial Management
• Housing
• Care Support

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“Let’s Talk about Sexuality and Intimacy Issues: What Makes Us Squirm, What Makes Us Firm, and What Turns Us Off… Or Our Emotional Reactions ON?”

This session will encourage each of us to explore our definitions of sexuality and intimacy. We will also explore and challenge our opinions and beliefs regarding the rights and responsibilities a PLwD has throughout the progression of their condition related to acts of intimacy and sexuality. We will review several situations and discuss concerns, options, and perspectives to reach consensus, if possible.

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“Where and When in Home, When You Are Lost: Helping Emeralds Find What They Are Seeking So They Can Settle”

During this session, we will rehearse supportive communication and interaction techniques that are helpful in helping someone who is getting lost in time and place to find satisfaction and comfort when language is fractured and expressed needs cannot be addressed readily or easily. 

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“How to Respond and Support Someone Living with Dementia Who is Missing an Important Person without Telling Whopper Lies or Truths Too Hard to Bear”

In this session we will explore strategies and options to provide someone who is looking for an unavailable person with a sense of comfort and connection through the use of positive interaction and supportive communication techniques.

“Using Music and Song to Connect and Engage When You are Not a Music Therapist and Not a Great Singer”

There is more and more evidence that music and rhythm are vital in promoting well-being and health for most PLwD. This session will explore a number of options for using music in a variety of ways to engage and satisfy both people living with dementia and those around them.

“Get Me Out of Here, I’m Being Kept Prisoner!” – What is Happening? Why is it Happening? What are Responses that Accept the Message and Provide What is Being Sought

In this session, we will address the very real feeling that many people have that a secured setting is actually constraining their freedom and preventing them from living as they otherwise would. We will review several common scenarios and work through possible solutions and interactions that are effective.

Why Might I Try to Hurt You? Could You Be Threatening Me, Without Even Knowing It? Reframing Your Perspective for Improved Interactions”

When a PLwD strikes out at you, it is definitely time to take a step back and consider what triggered that reaction. All too frequently, care partners become focused on their goal or task and forget to seek and sustain permission to support and help throughout an interaction. This session is designed to help care partners develop new awareness, knowledge and skills to reduce risk of physical resistance to care routines.

“Getting Someone to Healthcare Who Does Not Want to Go: What Can you Do or Say Differently that Might Work Better?”

Developing our skills at providing the just right support and rationale in order to help a PLwD decide to go to see a medical provider, when their initial reaction is to refuse and resist.

“Understanding the Causes and Meaning of Sundowning, How Can We Cope Better?”

It is not uncommon for PLwD to experience a worsening of ability to take in and use data from the world about them in a rational and reasonable way as the day draws to an end. In this session, we will work on our skills at coping with this changing capacity.

“Offering Choices that Move the Care Support Agenda Forward While Respecting and Protecting the Person’s Right to Choose or Refuse”

When someone doesn’t notice the needs of their body for nourishment, hydration, sleep, cleaning, grooming, or fresh clothing, it can be a challenge to get agreement to participate in the process of meeting those needs. This session will focus on providing choices that help the person move forward into the task rather than resist the activity.