Category: Featured

The Top 4 Things You Need to Know About Best Friends

People with dementia deserve the best care. And what they need most of all is someone dedicated to helping them feel safe, secure, and valued—at all stages of the disease. But being a dementia caregiver is an incredibly challenging role. The Best Friends™ approach is designed to help caregivers in this role, and it has proven effective in transforming care settings and improving the lives of both residents and staff.  So, what makes this approach so unique and successful?  What is the Approach? The Best Friends™ approach is recognized as a best practice in Memory Care because of its positive…

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Inside The Best Friends Staff, Second Edition

The second edition of the bestselling staff training tool from the Best Friends™ product suite is packed with resources to help staff in dementia care gain the required skills and confidence to deliver optimal care and succeed in this challenging caregiver role. Here, we break down the contents of the book so that you can see just how it can work for you! Part I discusses the foundations of effective training and provides an overview of the Best Friends approach. Reinvent and Energize Training Chapter 1 describes ways to reinvent and energize boring and ineffectual training programs. Currently, many providers…

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How Can The Best Friends Staff Work for Me?

The Best Friends Staff: Learning to Deliver Exceptional Dementia Care focuses on the education and training for professionals learning to create an outstanding memory care program. The book is written for a wide audience of individuals working in long-term care settings, such as in-home services, adult day centers, assisted living, and skilled nursing care. The book will also be helpful for family care partners seeking to learn more about care services for their family members. If you work in memory care at any level, in any role, here is how this book can benefit you. Program administrators will learn how…

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Intergenerational Activities: Using the Best Friends Approach with Children

With the Best Friends™ approach, activities are more than just what’s on the calendar. Using Best Friends, almost everything can become an extended, interesting opportunity for engagement. A simple handshake can lead to a discussion about fingernail polish, gloves, work done by hand, “lifelines,” rings on fingers, promise rings, weddings, and more. A teapot can be enjoyed for its beauty, and discussions can follow about making tea, reading tea leaves, the different flavors of tea, and the Boston Tea Party. Because the bottom line of the Best Friends approach is to focus on the person rather than the task. In…

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