Highlands
is a specialist Care Home for the Residential and Day
care of clients suffering from all varieties of Dementia
and is registered as such with the National Care Standards
Commission. Alzheimer's
Disease is the most common cause but others may
be Vascular dementia, alcohol-induced dementia and the
rarer forms such as Pick's Disease. The Home is divided
into two distinct areas (Park House and Oak House) in
adjoining buildings and each meeting different needs.
Park House is equipped and staffed for the more dependent
sufferer while Oak House caters for those who are, as
yet, more socially able. There is communicating access
between the two houses.
The Care in the Community Act 1993
has allowed Local Authorities much scope for putting
care into people's homes when it becomes necessary but
caring for a family member at home with progressive
dementia is likely, in time, to become more than most
carers can cope with. Highlands is geared to provide
the necessary quality care when that time comes. Our
staff undergo the training to allow them to cope with
the difficult challenges that behaviour and communication
can cause in someone with dementia. It is our view that
behavioural problems are the product of increasing frustration
due to an inability to communicate needs and that the
solution lies not in medication but in fostering non-verbal
forms of communication that effectively restore the
free transfer of information as far as possible. Needs
can then be met, frustration reduced and behavioural
problems greatly eased.
Anyone
who has spent time with a sufferer from dementia will
be more than aware that their ability to orientate themselves
in time and place is impaired to varying degrees. This
has the effect of giving them a different reality from
that which we regard as normal. It can produce great
difficulties in having even a simple conversation because
of the mental dislocation that occurs. It has been the
accepted routine that great efforts should be made to
remind sufferers of the "here and now" in
order to try to re-orientate them. It is our belief
that this practice is both misguided and likely to cause
confusion with subsequent negative effects on behaviour.
We firmly advocate what has become known as validation
theory. This says that the effects of dementia are such
as to produce a gradual, irreversible change in reality
perception which progresses until the sufferer no longer
sees the world around them in the same way as we do.
They may live in a different time frame and present
surroundings may be convincingly seen as a recreation
of places lived in during the past. It is pointless
to keep telling them this is not so. The confusion it
causes is akin to the effects of brainwashing and leads
to emotional distress. A more reasonable approach is
to accept that - for them, at least - the reality they
have is just as valid as our own and to try and enter
it so that a meeting of minds can take place on their
terms. The adjustment is not easy at first for staff
used to reality as a concrete fact but the dividends
for care can be well worth the perseverance.
You will have gained from this short
resume that our approach to dementia is an empathic,
psychosocial one and not pharmacological in essence.
Drugs very often do more harm than good in dementia.
Highlands Care Home is run in partnership by Dr Tristram
Smyth and Mrs Dianne Smyth. |