The Open Dementia Programme

The Open Dementia e-Learning Programme is aimed at anyone who comes into contact with someone with dementia and provides a general introduction to the disease and the experience of living with dementia.
This programme is designed to be accessible to a wide audience and to make learning as enjoyable as possible and so allows users to fully interact with the content and includes video, audio and graphics to make the content come alive. In particular the programme includes a considerable amount of new video footage shot by both the Alzheimer’s Society and SCIE where people with dementia and their carers share their views and feelings on camera.

Who they are suitable for:

The programme will therefore be suitable for care home staff (carers, administrative and managerial staff), domiciliary care workers, registered general, mental and district nurses, general and acute hospital staff, allied health care professionals, social workers, ambulance service staff, community support workers (meals on wheels, transport services) and family carers.

Click on a title below to open the resource.

Screenshot	Title	Key areas covered
	What it is and what it isn’t	a) Views of dementia in the media. b) Facts and common misconceptions about dementia. c) Common symptoms, clinical terminology and causes of symptoms.
	Living with dementia	a) The person with dementia as a unique individual. b) The importance of knowing their background and life history. c) Abilities people with a dementia retain in spite of the difficulties they face. d) How dementia impacts on families, friends and community and the support that is needed.
	What causes dementia	a) The different types of dementia and the key characteristics of each. b) The different areas of the brain and how dementia affects these areas. c) Factors that are known to increase or lessen the risk of dementia.
	Diagnosis and who can help	a) The process of diagnosis and its impact. b) Help and support available, key professional roles and skills and multidisciplinary support services. c) Anti-dementia drugs and non-pharmacological treatments.
	Common difficulties and how to help	a) How dementia affects each individual differently. b) Four common areas of difficulty faced by people with dementia. c) Practical strategies to assist with difficulties. d) Difficulties faced by people with dementia not caused by damage to the brain, but by other factors.
	The emotional impact of dementia	a) The emotional dimension of dementia. b) The importance of effective strategies to help people experiencing difficult emotions. c) Explore a range of situations where we can have a major impact on a person with dementia through our actions.
	Positive communication	a) Helping a person with dementia understand our message. b) Helping a person with dementia make themselves understood. c) Communicating with people experiencing a different reality. d) The importance of non-verbal communication.

About the authors:

Buz Loveday

Buz Loveday is the lead trainer of Dementia Trainers (www.dementiatrainers.co.uk). With a background in statutory and voluntary sector social care provision, Buz has been a full-time dementia trainer since 1991. From '05 to '07 she delivered a nationwide programme of training on dementia to Inspectors from CSCI. She provides dementia training for a number of London boroughs, as well as a large number of private and voluntary sector organisations. Buz runs the Dementia Care Trainers' Programme, an accredited course for new dementia trainers. She and her team also deliver other accredited dementia training through their approved Open College Network learning centre.

Buz is co-author, with Tom Kitwood, of the training manual 'Improving Dementia Care: A Resource for Training and Professional Development' published by the Journal of Dementia Care. She is currently co-writing the new Alzheimer's Society training pack. Buz is a qualified 'Dementia Care Mapping' evaluator, NVQ assessor and person-centred counsellor, and all the team members are Alzheimer's Society Approved Trainers.

The mission of Dementia Trainers is to raise awareness and understanding, to improve skills, to increase insight into the needs of people with dementia, and to promote a positive, person-centred approach towards their care.

Damian Murphy

Having lived in community with young people with learning disabilities in Latin America and after an intense experience of being a full time carer, Damian then spent the next 8 years in the field of learning disability nursing before an interest in older people with learning disabilities led him to move into the field of dementia care. Damian spent two years as an independent advocate for people with dementia in an acute hospital setting before joining the Alzheimer’s Society in 2003. He has spent the last 5 years in the Louth branch in Lincolnshire, developing branch support services and coordinating a home respite service. He completed a dementia studies degree with the Bradford Dementia Group and was also given a CSIP positive practice award for his exploratory relationship-centred work with couples. As a training project manager with the Quality Care Team he is currently leading on the Dementia Champions™ project.

Acknowledgements:

SCIE would like to thank the following organisations and people:

The Alzheimer’s Society for kindly giving SCIE permission to use footage from their two video publications ‘In their own words’ and ‘Tomorrow is another day’
To obtain further information about these DVDs, please visit: http://www.alzheimers.org.uk
Guild Care and Linfield Care Home who feature on three of the video clips taken from ‘Tomorrow is another day’.
Our peer reviewers: Trevor Adams (University of Surrey), Gwen Coleman (Alzheimer’s Society), Pat Virji (Jewish care) and Simon Burrow (Trent Dementia Services Development Centre)
Everyone who took part in our user trials (Jackie Derrick, Hazel Relph, Julie Watts, Elizabeth Riordan, Hope Ogida, Janet Baylis, Claudine Davies, Christine Edgington, Sharon Cruz, Denise Raper, Matthew Martin).

Technical development:

Programming and graphic design by Cimex Ltd.

Copyright

All material in these e-learning resources, including text, graphics, photographs, video and audio is copyright of the Social Care Institute for Excellence (SCIE), with the exception of the video excerpts taken from the videos 'Tomorrow is another day' and 'In their own words', for which copyright belongs to the Alzheimer's Society. Use if these resources for educational purposes is freely permitted, but commercial use of these resources or any modification to the resources is not permitted without prior authorisation by both the Alzheimer's Society and SCIE.

Images and audio

The majority of the images and voices used in this resource are those of actors. This approach has been adopted to protect the identities of the service users and carers whose accounts have been drawn upon or the accounts have been based on situations indicative of the events or issues being covered.