Training helps build confidence in young people

One of the big issues that Creative Spaces is tackling is the negative stereotyping that tends to build up around dementia. So we're working with local young people, giving them a chance to learn more about dementia, get involved in the project and spend time with older residents.

A recent training session, 'Dementia Awareness and Communication', was held at Penrice Community College. It was designed to give young people a basic understanding of dementia and share useful techniques in communicating with people who may have lost some or all of their verbal skills. It will help reduce their fear of people with dementia and increase their confidence in conversing with them.

Facilitated by Sensory Trust and Cornwall Care, the training was attended by 7 students (aged 12 - 14) and two teachers from Penrice Community College.

Many of these students will take part in evaluating the Creative Spaces project through interviews with staff and residents at Trevarna. Their aim will be to discover people’s memories relating to gardens and how they will want to use the garden areas at Trevarna when it's completed. It is therefore important that they feel able to communicate with the residents, to understand them and to see them as valued individuals.

It is interesting to see how some of the students have started to provide some mentoring themselves. Three of them were involved in the first year and, although they had not previously received training in communication skills, were able to use the awareness they had gained from their earlier experiences to support the new students in the group.

Dementia Awareness

The session used a questionnaire to gauge the young people’s current understanding and perception of dementia. The questions were:

1. What is Dementia?
   a) a mental health problem
   b) a disorder of the brain
   c) normal aging process
2. What is the most common type of dementia?
3. People with dementia need to be treated like children because they cannot be trusted to do anything for themselves. True or False?
4. What percentage of people over 80 have some sort of dementia?
5. Which of these is not a type of Dementia? Korsakoff’s dementia, Lewy Body dementia, Vascular dementia, Multiple Sclerosis
6. People with dementia no longer need mental stimulation. True or False?
7. Is there a family/hereditary link with dementia (e.g. if your parents have dementia does that mean you will get it?)
8. What are the lifestyle factors that increase the likelihood of getting vascular dementia?
9. Dementia can be treated with medication and therapy. True or False?
10. Dementia only affects people who are over 70 years old. True or False?

Considering that most of the young people do not have any direct association with someone with dementia, their general understanding of it was quite good. They have seen and heard news items about it and this has helped to raise their awareness.

Communication skills

A practical activity was used to demonstrate how difficult it can be for someone with dementia to understand what is being communicated to them.

Sitting on the floor holding a piece of paper and a pencil behind their backs, the students were given a series of instructions to sketch an image. They were unaware at the time that they were being directed to draw a simple house with a chimney, a front path, windows, a door and the sun high in the sky.

Once they had finished and were told that they had been instructed to draw a house, the pupils were amazed. Some of the finished images could be clearly identified as a house whilst others were merely lines and a circle drawn around the paper. It demonstrated to the students the difficulty that the brain can have in sifting through information it receives and then communicating that information to the relevant parts of the body; in this situation, the hands.

A fun and creative technique, the pupils enjoyed performing it and, at the same time, began to understand that although they may use straightforward words and sentences, a person with dementia may still have difficulty understanding their words due to the way in which the illness affects the parts of the brain relating to language.

This led to a discussion about the types of ways in which we can communicate with others. The young people were asked to name methods of communication and listed forms such as: Text, Email, Phone, Letter, Drawing pictures, Body language.

The group was then split into pairs and asked to find out about a holiday that each had been on, without asking any questions. This caused some confusion to begin with until one of the students, involved from Year 1, remembered he had found out something about one of the residents through just talking with her. Once they understood this type of communication they relaxed into the activity and were able to successfully glean information from each other.

By demonstrating this technique we were able to show the group that opening up conversation through sharing information was a much better way to communicate than bombarding someone with a barrage of questions.

Each pair was then given a short statement on paper which one of them had to communicate to the other without speaking the words. Most of them opted to draw visual representations of the statement whilst others acted out the words.

It demonstrated to them how difficult it could be to not only get information across to someone with dementia but also that a person with dementia may have difficulty in understanding words spoken by others.

Summary

This training session provided the young people with useful insight into the difficulties that someone with dementia can experience in communicating; not only in expressing themselves but also understanding what others are saying to them. The students understood that people struggled with verbally expressing themselves but hadn’t realised that people with dementia may not understand what is being said to them. The practical sessions provided the students with useful information in how they might approach this in the future.

Their knowledge of dementia has increased through the initial awareness session; giving them a greater understanding that people with dementia are still people and that they are able to participate in activities and other social situations.

For those who have been involved since Year 1 of the project, they have already experienced the difficulty of communicating with people with dementia and the awkward feelings associated with that. This training session will build on the confidence they have gained and will help them to mentor the new students involved.

For the new students at the training session this knowledge will support them in their early days of meeting the residents at Trevarna and help them to gain more confidence in building friendships with them.

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