Living a good life with Dementia

“This is the book we need. Too often people living with dementia are not included in cutting edge thinking and practice, but this book provides a comprehensive overview of some of the most important initiatives and perspectives that will transform support for people with dementia and enable us all to live together, as equals, at every stage of our lives. Great credit goes to the authors for integrating so much useful information."

"This book is an extremely helpful guide to social care practitioners. It brings together a number of person-centred models and theories together into one book, which is easy to read in an accessible format. It can be easy in practice for the voice of the person to be overshadowed by well meaning family and practitioners. This book’s focus on relationship-centred care, seeing the value and contribution of the person living with Dementia within their care planning, is essential knowledge for practitioners seeking to empower the person to have genuine choice and control…I would highly recommend this book to anyone working in front line social care to aid their practice."

“If you are living with Dementia as a feature of your life, in this book, you have a comprehensive guide to living a good and interdependent life, with near neighbours; at the centre of a connected community. If you have the privilege of being a professional that serves people living with Dementia, in this book you have a practice and theoretical guide, as to how you can avoid inadvertently institutional people. It is a compass you can take with you on the road, as you walk alongside people and communities, supporting (not directing) them as they explore abundant, surprising, joyful and authentic ways to live well with Dementia, and to continue to be valued citizens and precious beloved gifts to those that surround them.”

"This is not a book you just read once! This is a book that keeps on giving as there is so much great content and actionable advice, useful tools and approaches. The journey through the book is easy to embark on and starting with ‘why’, goes from a history of developments in dementia care and support to where we are now and beyond to a sense of the direction for the future. The timing is perfect to coincide with the release of the government white paper 'People at the heart of care'."

"From my perspective, ‘Living with Dementia’ could easily be retitled or sub-titled, ‘How to Organise Human Services’ or ‘The Real Meaning of Care’ – because its core analysis and well-researched and argued proposals constitute, to me, a rallying cry for the rediscovery of relationship-based social services and a damning critique of the governmental orthodoxy of the post Thatcher decades. That asserts that care is a commodity and, as John McKnight so eloquently put it, “the silly idea that care can be bought and managed”.

Liz’s writing is infused with the simple truth that relationships and inclusion, ‘supplemented and complemented’ (Al Etmanski) by sensitive professionals and services that value the primacy of the relational or core economy, are the stuff of true care.

This is essential reading for the politicians of all parties and Whitehall policy folk who have dismantled Social Services, replaced this with the social care market, and, as that collapses, spout ‘reform’ but really only understand Elastoplast, and imagine that care is about cost rather than value!"