First Day of the "Collaborating for a Demenitia-Friendly Washington" Conference

Today was the first day of the conference, and it did not disappoint.  We have been working hard on planning this for nearly a year, and our efforts are paying off.  Tomorrow is the second and last day.  Thanks to covid, we are again this year entirely on Zoom.

The keynote speaker, LueRachelle Brim-Atkins, told a moving story about her mother's decline.  There wasn't a dry eye in the house.  

Lue-Rachelle's presentation was followed by a panel discussion, that included a participant whom I had recruited from our local parks and rec department.  She spoke about how, as the city Recreation Manager for Parks and Public Facilities, she ensured that people working at the rec center desk would know how to recognize and respond to someone showing evidence of dementia.

I then attended a breakout session led by a woman from Prince George's County, MD who spoke on programs they have implemented in churches to care for those among them with dementia.  This included "purple services," periodic shortened worship services structured for people with dementia.  Prince George's County is near where I grew up.

After this was a talk by someone from the American Library Association in the mid-West (a Seattle ex-pat) who spoke about programs that libraries implement to serve those in the community with dementia.

If you read Beating the Dementia Monster, you know that the ability to read is one of the very late casualties of Alzheimer's disease.  People preserve their ability to read until very late in the progress of the disease.  As a result, libraries are in a unique position to serve victims of Alzheimer's disease throughout much of it's course.  

And it's the same thing with music.  In even the later stages of dementia, people respond very positively to music that they recall from their youth.  Back in 2019 we posted about a documentary called Alive Inside.  It attracted attention at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival and was all about the impact of music on people with dementia.

I expect that tomorrow will be just as interesting.