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Category: Best Friends

Dementia Care at a Distance

The COVID-19 crisis is taking a heavy toll on all of us, particularly family and professional care partners. Visitors are prohibited in most residential care communities; this is necessary but certainly can be distressing to families and persons with dementia. Even when we are together, we are told to stay six feet apart. The very phrase “social distancing” is the opposite of the Best Friends™ Approach and what we want in quality dementia care. In many ways, socialization is the treatment for dementia. Social distancing (and lots of handwashing) is necessary to ensure good public health practices, but can we…

Getting the Life Story into Daily Use

This post originally appeared on www.bestfriendsapproach.com. View it here. When we make friends, our stories come out slowly. As we get to know one another, we learn each other’s favorite foods and songs, pastimes and passions. But person’s with dementia, especially those who live in memory care, may not be able to recall or share their own stories. And their care partners may be juggling so many responsibilities that they don’t have the time to sit down and listen. This is why the Life Story matters. It summarizes the most important elements of a person’s life. With those…

Best Friends™ Approach Free Downloadable Materials

What is the Best Friends™ Approach? These 13 handouts are free for you to download and will introduce you to the Best Friends™ approach, a highly successful model for dementia care that puts the person first. Adopted world-wide, this easy-to-implement approach is built on the essential elements of friendship—respect, empathy, support, trust, and humor. Use these handouts to learn the foundations of this approach and how effortlessly it can be adopted in your organization. Visit the Best Friends Portal for more information and resources on this approach and its related products and training. 21 Ways to Sustain a Best Friends™…

The Top 5 Reasons to Become a Best Friends Master Trainer

The Best Friends™ approach to dementia care is among the most well-known and highly regarded humanistic approaches to providing care for people with dementia. The Best Friends™ Master Trainer Certification program is designed to produce a qualified on-site staff member who can provide ongoing training, coaching, support, inspiration, and programming advice for every level of staff at their location. Here are the top 5 reasons to become a Best Friends™ Certified Master Trainer (BF-CMT)! The Best Friends™ approach is truly the best dementia care The person-centered Best Friends™ approach is grounded in the understanding that relationships are supremely important…

Getting Started with the Life Story

Respect, trust, humor, support—these are all things we share with our friends. We know our friend’s occupations, marital status, general interests, favorite foods, type of car, hobbies, and other details. We know their family history and traditions, likes and dislikes, even some of their secrets! We also know their strengths and weaknesses and understand their basic personalities. We know how to cheer them up when they are having a bad day, when to give advice (or not), and how to turn a no into a yes. Great dementia care can be rooted in something as simple as friendship. As we…

Questions that Enrich a Life Story

The Life Story in dementia care is a person’s right to be known and be among people who care. To help ensure that right, you need to learn a lot about the person and incorporate that into your everyday relationship. You can use this knowledge to bring up favorite memories and special achievements, provide cues, and take advantage of past preferences and interests. Life Story information enhances conversations, helps customize activities, allows us to better understand behavior, and helps us redirect with greater success. Play detective when writing a Life Story! Looking beneath the surface can pay many dividends in…

30 Activities to Do in 30 Seconds or Less

Planned activities do not happen all day long. Individuals with the ability to think through how to spend their time can initiate being with others or spending time alone. Persons with dementia often cannot do this. They need help—not only in structured activity—but also in relational interactions throughout the day. These 30 simple, unstructured interactions are not on the activity calendar, but they are probably the most important of the ways that we interact with persons with dementia. Greet the person by name Make eye contact and smile Shake hands Ask someone…

Moments Add Up and Make a Difference

We’d like for you to consider the following two scenarios. As you read them, we think you’ll begin to see how persons with dementia have many of the same needs that we do and how being a Best Friend can be a powerful tool for supporting quality of life. Scenario 1 Imagine meeting an old friend for lunch and finding your normally upbeat, positive friend in tears. As a friend, how would you respond? You would probably: Ask her what is wrong. Try to get more information. She tells you that she has been laid off from a job that…

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