Anna Heino & Nina Kalliomäki
The cognitive changes associated with dementia pose new challenges to everyday interactions for the person living with dementia (PlWD) and their loved ones. These challenges not only involve declining memory but often also – or primarily – difficulties in maintaining attention as well as producing and understanding speech. Changes in communication can feel particularly burdensome for both the PlWD and their loved ones. Sometimes, family members even describe the PlWD as “no longer communicating.” Properly targeted communication support methods can significantly enhance the individual’s ability to participate and their quality of life; hence, increasing awareness is crucial.
The Beyond Words project (Omin sanoin) by the Alzheimer Society of Finland gathers, pilots and develops communication support methods together with PlWD and their families. The piloted methods cover a wide range of forms of interaction from verbal to nonverbal communication. In this presentation, we will go through the target group’s experiences of the effectiveness of communication support methods and the emotions they evoke. We evaluate the methods based on qualitative interview and observation data collected from professionals as well as from PlWD and their families. Our goal is to shed light on PlWD as a special group within the context of linguistic accessibility and participation and to foster discussion in order to strengthen interdisciplinary collaboration in this field.
