Staff at Balhousie Clement Park have completed additional training designed to help them provide the very best care to all residents.
The team at the Dundee home took part in the AIR project, in partnership with the University of St Andrews, receiving training in Adaptive Interaction to better support residents who are non-verbal.
Cheryl Roy, Home Manager, attended the seven-week course along with four care staff, led by top dementia researcher Dr Maggie Ellis.
They were taught how to use various interactive techniques to communicate with residents, who due to conditions such as dementia are unable to communicate.
Cheryl said: “We did interactive sessions with the residents and used the techniques we were taught in the sessions.
“We were filmed doing it so we could look back and see if there were any areas we could have done differently.
“It certainly has us all thinking differently about communication.”
The purpose of the study is to find out whether Adaptive Interaction has significant benefits for non-verbal residents. The study saw Clement Park become a training site for the project.
Christina McConnell McGrath, Research Assistant at the University of St Andrews, said: “People with advanced dementia have trouble with speech but they are still able to communicate in other ways.
“They make eye contact, facial expressions, gestures and can produce sounds.
“Adaptive Interaction uses all the actions and expressions an individual with advanced dementia makes to communicate and interact with the person.
“It involves matching your actions to their actions. For example, if the person with dementia tapped on the table you could respond by making a similar sound.”
As part of a follow-up to the project, staff from Clement Park are planning to attend an event with the families of the residents to examine the impact it has had.
