Main description:

Supporting practitioners to promote service user involvement, this book highlights ways to engage people with dementia to allow them to have an impact on improving their quality of life. This book will help practitioners to think creatively about the best approaches to involving people with dementia in decisions that affect their lives. Full of useful tips and with a range of practical examples, it provides tried and tested methods for enabling engagement in day-to-day decisions as well as in research and policy development. Chapters cover why involvement is so crucial, what the ethical challenges are and how to overcome these, how involvement can be implemented, what people with dementia want from professionals and the services they use, and how to create wider dementia-friendly communities. The voices of people with dementia resonate throughout the book, making this essential reading for all professionals working in dementia care, including service commissioners, public health officials and policy makers, as well as academics and students in these fields.

Contents:

Section 1: Approaches to involving people with dementia. 1: Why it is important to involve people with dementia. 2: The context of involvement. 3: Underlying principles. Section 2: Challenges and things to think about. 4: Ethical issues. 5: Engaging with seldom heard groups. 6: Making it happen. 7: Research. 8: Training. 9: Design. 10: Dementia friendly communities. 11: Health and social care. 12: Getting the message across.