Who We Work With
Obviously dementia is connected to goal number 3 of the sustainable development goals, which is to “Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages”. According to the UN health agency, the annual global cost of dementia is estimated at $818 billion and from this point, there is a need for a place where they can take care of them and ensure that people with dementia get a healthy life. Therefore, Apex harmony is a place where they take care of elders who have dementia to provide them with a healthy life and to give them the opportunity to deal with dementia in good and high-quality residents that can understand their needs with the experts working with the residents.
Information about the issue you face, causes, and consequences of the issue:
Our main challenge is how to communicate with the residents. In dementia, the communication skills of a person get gradually affected and their ability to process information gets progressively weaker. At the same time, there are many ways to make a connection with them. You need to be patient, listen, and understand at the same time when you talk you need to talk slowly and clearly and your voice tone needs to remain positive, friendly, and cheerful.
Residents
Residents we interact with are elderly ladies with moderate dementia who live in the lodge. To make their lives more interesting, we design games/activities for their enjoyment and mental stimulation. However, we mostly just talk and listen to the residents; Oftentimes they share interesting life experience and pieces of wisdom. While they do not remember us, and some of them have at times mistaken us for another person they have once known, we get to know them over the course of many visits. Despite dementia, each resident has their own personalities and habits – for instance, singing. During one of the sessions, one of the residents taught me how to sing Rasa Sayang, the tune was extremely catchy and fun even though I couldn’t speak Malay. She also repeatedly told me not to be shy with my voice, and to sing no matter what people tell me. Singing is good for my English.
Lodge Staff
The AHL staff play an important role in our activities as they make our interactions with the residents slightly easier. We can interact with the residents comfortably and, should the resident require help in getting up or going somewhere else, the staff will help them out as they’re more experienced with that than us. They also help us overcome the language barrier, as many of the residents don’t speak a lot of English. The staff helps us by translating what we’re saying and encouraging the residents to participate in the activities that we’ve planned out for the day to make our interactions slightly easier. One of the residents, Jessie, speaks mostly Malay, so some of the staff at AHL that speak Malay could help us translate what we are saying and encourage Jessie to participate in the activity.
Students (Us)
As students, we plan the activities for every week we go to AHL. This is important because we need to be able to explain the activities to our resident partners and make sure that they have a general understanding of what’s happening so that they enjoy their time during the activity. Even though we end up talking more than doing the activity, it’s still enjoyable to go to AHL because we get to understand the lives of people with dementia, and some of us have realised that it’s really not that different from our lives. We try to base our activities on things the residents like doing, such as singing, drawing, and painting. However, we also encourage them to do some other activities that build on the basic ones, such as stencilling to build fine motor skills and stimulate further brain activity. Thus, we have to make sure that the activities that we plan are not only fun and enjoyable for the residents, but also serve a greater purpose in terms of how it helps them. – Wing and Advait