#049: The Importance of Function in the Dementia Friendly Home

The Alzheimer’s Podcast:
Adapting Your Home for Dementia – Keep them home longer, safer, and happier

Welcome to Episode 49 of The Alzheimer’s Podcast, your #1 source for practical tips and insights.

I’m Mike Good of Together in This.

My goal is always to empower you and your family to maintain a positive experience, reduce and eliminate the need for medications, and make your time together with those you care for, the best it can be.

(show notes below)

(33 minutes)

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Show Notes:

For the last couple of episodes, Christy Turner and I have been discussing how to bring the various aspects of memory care into your home to help you delay or completely avoid the need to move your loved one into a professional memory care community.

For many reasons including the fact that the average memory care community in the USA is about $100,000 annually this can be your best choice.

However, it’s going to take a lot of planning and hard work, but if it’s what you want – you can do it!

In this episode, we discuss more actionable things you can do to make your home Dementia Friendly. This is based on my signature course, Adapting Your Home for Dementia, where I teach students how to adapt and manage four elements of the home.

These include: safety, function, stimulation, and eliminating triggers which result in negative outcomes.

And in today’s episode, we discuss element 2 of the Dementia Friendly Home – Function.

Function is a home’s ability to meet the needs of its residents and empowers a person to safely complete tasks on their own or with minimal assistance.

Maybe for the caregiver that’s a wash basin for cleaning soiled clothing or for the person with dementia a simplified way to enjoy gardening – either way it’s about adapting your home to meet the needs of all residents.

Adapting your home for dementia and making it dementia friendly is a lot of work but by taking incremental steps each day, you can keep your loved one home longer, safer, and happier.

Thank you and I look forward to sharing more with you in our next episode when Christy and I discuss Stimulation and tips on how to keep your loved one active at home.