Abstract

Abstract

Friday, January 18, 2019

A sturdy template


Pam MacLeod, who works in the Massachusetts Executive Office of Elder Affairs, describes herself as a program development professional. Since early in her career, she has helped foreign, state and municipal governments develop new policies and programs and now she works to address the burgeoning number of seniors, a good many of them with Alzheimer’s or some other form of dementia.
She joined Elder Affairs in June of 2014 and became involved in the Dementia Friendly movement in 2015.
“We heard about and learned about the Dementia Friendly movement,” MacLeod commented.” We wanted to see what Minnesota was doing as they had already become a national model.” Wisconsin was another state that emerged as a leader. And now Massachusetts itself could become an example to other states. To get things started, they consulted Olivia Mastry of Minnesota, a prominent figure in the Dementia Friendly movement. Not long thereafter, Massachusetts became an “early adopter” of dementia friendly practices along with only a handful of other states.
An example of the Dementia Friendly movement was a planned community in the Netherlands established in 2006, called Buurtzorg. It was a remarkable breakthrough. Over time, this Dutch outpost provided a new model for dementia care. A decade later, in the Boston area, I witnessed a large audience at a kick-off event for Dementia Friendly Massachusetts. “We had quite a turnout,” MacLeod noted. On my weekly blog, I had unprecedented “hits” on my blog. Typically at that time, I would get around 300 visits a week. But that week I got around 900 visits. And that wasn’t a fluke. The next week I got close to 600 visits. How this happened is that there was a critical mass of people who wanted to learn more about the  dementia friendly movement. And if the organizers had settled on a smaller venue, much of the vitality would have been sapped. In the logistics business, you have to plan well ahead.
The four tenets of the organization are that people want control for as long they can; people strive to maintain or improve their lives; people seek social interaction; and people seek ‘warm’ relationships’ with others. With that in mind, I am looking forward to observing the movement grow, in the U.S. and beyond.

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