Dementia is not a natural part of aging, and it is much more than becoming forgetful. Creating positive experiences for the people taking part in your sessions, including for those living with dementia, is essential to helping them to create and sustain an active lifestyle with your support.
Later Life Training is an industry-leading provider supporting the coaching workforce to better understand the importance of Great Coaching for people living with dementia, and importantly how making changes to coaching practice can improve sessions for everyone.
Director at Later Life Training Bob Laventure explains that dementia “can affect memory, problem-solving, thinking, language, mood, perception and behaviour. It is most prevalent in older people (over 65s) but it can affect people under that age too. There are more than 100 known variations affecting over 850,000 people in the UK, with 2 in 3 people living with dementia ‘in the community’.
“Later Life Training have provided over 500 sector professionals and informal care givers with continued professional development training to enhance their knowledge, skills and confidence in caring and supporting people living with dementia.
“‘Dementia Friendly Training’ is available from the Alzheimer’s Society. This provides a great starting point to raise general awareness. However, our work with dementia services has helped us to understand that to be successful in providing the positive environments that can engage people living with dementia, being dementia friendly is only a starting point.