Our team have undertaken a number of dementia/ Alzheimer’s courses to ensure we are equipped with the skills and resources to care and support your loved one who is dealing with Dementia/ Alzheimer’s. We understand that receiving the diagnosis and accepting the changes you are seeing your loved one go through can be daunting, scary and heart breaking all at the same time. We are here to both support the service user and their families to ensure the service user is able to remain at home with a service that meets their personal needs and support the family. During the initial assessment we will sit down together and run through the service user needs, whilst also identifying:
What Is Dementia/Alzheimer’s
Dementia is an umbrella term for a range of progressive conditions that affect the brain. There are over 200 subtypes of dementia, but the five most common are: Alzheimer’s disease, vascular dementia, dementia with Lewy bodies, frontotemporal dementia and mixed dementia.
The brain is made up of nerve cells (neurones) that communicate with each other by sending messages. Dementia damages the nerve cells in the brain so messages can’t be sent from and to the brain effectively, which prevents the body from functioning normally.
Regardless of which type of dementia is diagnosed and what part of the brain is affected, each person will experience dementia in their own unique way.
Dementia can affect a person at any age but it is more commonly diagnosed in people over the age of 65 years. A person developing dementia before age 65 is said to have young onset dementia.
There are over 850,000 people living with dementia in the UK and this is set to rise to over one million by 2021.
Alzheimer’s symptoms tend to develop gradually over time. These
may include:
difficulty remembering recent events while having a good memory for past events
poor concentration
issues recognising people or objects
poor organisation skills
confusion
disorientation
slow, muddled or repetitive speech
reduced ability to perform everyday tasks such as cooking, bill paying, shopping etc.
problems with decision making.