Forrester Court uses technology to tackle dementia

Home news

Aug 01, 2011

Google Earth and YouTube are helping younger people with dementia at Forrester Court retain their life skills, our experts have discovered.

Google Earth and YouTube are helping younger people with dementia at Forrester Court retain their life skills, our experts have discovered.

Care UK, which runs our home and 60 others, plus dementia day care services, is committed to finding ways of helping people with dementia lead fulfilling and active lives. Now its activities co-ordinators have found ways of using new technology to stimulate their imagination and memory.

Julius Adesanya, our activities co-ordinator explained: “Thanks to greater awareness, we are seeing more and more younger people being diagnosed with early onset dementia across our centres. The youngest person we have had living at our home was 41.

“People are now coming into care services using laptops and smart phones, so we decided to start making more of technology and that has meant we can really tailor sessions to the individual.”

The Care UK teams are using Google Earth to show people where they used to live. Julius said: “It is a wonderful resource because people see pubs where they used to meet their friends, places they worked and schools they went to. It triggers memories and they begin to reminisce. This helps them to maintain their cognitive and verbal skills.”

Centres are also using YouTube to tailor entertainment for each person and Julius says some of the older residents have been delighted at the footage of entertainers from yesteryear.