Free Guide to Dementia-Friendly Environments
Scottish University collaborates with signage company to create a free guide to creating Dementia-friendly care environments.
A new set of resources to help carers create Dementia-friendly environments is to be released free of charge later this year. The guides and fact sheets will summarise the most common challenges faced, and offer simple tips to making living environments more Dementia-friendly.
Strathclyde University researchers are conducting a review of worldwide dementia research for Glasgow-based Dementia signage company Recogneyes as part of the MedTech initiative, a project which brings together businesses and academics in order to develop innovative products.
In a move to help carers and dementia sufferers in a practical way, Recogneyes founder Glen Ballantyne decided not to keep the research exclusively for the company’s in-house use but to publish the results as a series of easy-to-follow guides and fact sheets and offer them free on their website as part of their Dementia Action Alliance pledge.
“We hear from a lot of carers who express frustration because they don’t have the time to go through reams of research papers and studies”, says Ballantyne. “Our goal is to summarise that information into reference materials that carer can use to immediately improve their care environment.”
Many of the suggestions in the guides are quick and easy to implement, yet can make a big difference in the daily life of someone with Dementia. For example carers wearing name tags with both a name and job title can make staff more easily recognised, and light switches should be made a contrasting colour from the wall to stand out.
A white paper outlining best practices for care homes will be available to professionals, while fact sheets that deal with individual aspects of Dementia care needs such as visual impairment, safety and recognition will highlight the key take-away points for anyone caring for a loved one with Dementia.
“Most people are aware of the memory problems of Dementia, but there are a whole other range of issues like depth-perception and colour blindness that people may have to cope with.”
With over 35.6 million people diagnosed with Dementia worldwide, these issues are likely to be encountered by almost every family and these fact sheets may go some way to helping them apply useful changes in their homes and workplaces.
To get the free white paper and fact sheets visit http://www.recogneyes.co.uk/free-guide