Greetings to everyone.
This is my first visit here.
I am hoping that in the future people will be able to share with me some "good practice" !!! Let me explain...
I became a C of E minister in 2003 and since then have become increasingly aware of the way dementia affects people's lives. When I was younger, my grandmother was diagnosed with Alzheimers and I remember watching her deteriorate and not understanding how the happy bustling lady I loved became quiet and withdrawn. She was haunted by people in her imagination and in her past that none of the family remembered and was convinced that she was "in trouble" for something she had done 50 years before.
Part of my post ordination training is to give my colleagues a presentation on an issue that interests me. I have chosen to examine ways in which the church succeeds and/or fails in integrating people with dementia (including those who have been known to the church before they became ill and those who have started attending afterwards).
I wonder if anyone can share some experiences of how they and their loved one/s have been received.
I hope one day that the information I gather here as well as the knowledge I have of those in my congregation will be applied in a way that makes being part of being a worshipping community a less forbidding experience.
Many thanks for reading this.
Fr Ian
This is my first visit here.
I am hoping that in the future people will be able to share with me some "good practice" !!! Let me explain...
I became a C of E minister in 2003 and since then have become increasingly aware of the way dementia affects people's lives. When I was younger, my grandmother was diagnosed with Alzheimers and I remember watching her deteriorate and not understanding how the happy bustling lady I loved became quiet and withdrawn. She was haunted by people in her imagination and in her past that none of the family remembered and was convinced that she was "in trouble" for something she had done 50 years before.
Part of my post ordination training is to give my colleagues a presentation on an issue that interests me. I have chosen to examine ways in which the church succeeds and/or fails in integrating people with dementia (including those who have been known to the church before they became ill and those who have started attending afterwards).
I wonder if anyone can share some experiences of how they and their loved one/s have been received.
I hope one day that the information I gather here as well as the knowledge I have of those in my congregation will be applied in a way that makes being part of being a worshipping community a less forbidding experience.
Many thanks for reading this.
Fr Ian