'This is my turn; I¿m talking now¿: findings and new directions from the Ex Memoria project.

Abstract

Although training and workforce development are high on the policy agenda at present (eg DoH 2009), there has been less progress in thinking about the kind of education that might be needed in order to provide dementia care that is genuinely person-centred. A continuing obstacle here is the tendency to assume that people who have dementia are to be understood ¿ as a group ¿ by virtue of their shared diagnosis rather than by their lived experience, in which diagnosis is an interruption rather than the whole story. Three approaches to overcoming this obstacle that I will discuss below are arts-based learning, teaching social history awareness, and increasing the involvement of the ¿experts by experience¿, people with dementia themselves.