Abstract

The pilot training programme aims to test the premise that attitudes towards people living with dementia need to change fundamentally. Established attitudes are that people living with dementia do not know what they say, behave the way they do because they can’t remember and/or because they have mental health issues and they are not the people they used to be. These attitudes have been exacerbated and have become entrenched in our psyche by the use of the term dementia: dementia, a Latin word, means madness, literally to be out of one’s mind. During this pilot training programme this condition was examined from different perspectives which underpin an alternative umbrella name proposed for this condition (if we have to have one) – Amelesia – and develop an effective communicative approach to conversations with people living with the condition¹. The programme draws on three sets of experiences: 1) those presented in the memoir Thank you lady (Drever, 2017) in which there are numerous examples of conversational gambits which lead to sustained and meaningful dialogue with the person affected by this condition; 2) from teaching foreign and second languages in primary and secondary classrooms; 3) from a literature review of effective communication in multilingual classrooms (Drever, 2001). The premise underlying this approach is that we need to adapt the way we speak to the context in which we find ourselves. We learn to do this by acting out various real-life scenarios. A small number of sixth form students and one community visitor participated in the programme. A multimethod approach was used to evaluate the programme. All participants reported changed attitudes at all levels as a result of this programme and they deem it appropriate for wider applicability.

¹ An online campaign will be run to gauge levels of interest in changing this name; until such time for the purpose of this training programme the term dementia will continue to be used.