How we define Dementia Care Types and Why

Background

We understand that defining stages of dementia is complicated. There are many reasons for this, for example:

•         Symptoms of dementia vary wildly from person to person.

•         Sometimes people may present mostly mild symptoms of dementia, but be determined to have a more advanced diagnosis due to one specific type of behaviour.

•         The severity of changes of behaviour can fluctuate over time

Any attempt to define the stages of dementia is not going to be perfect.

Our research has shown that care homes’ definitions can be quite different from each other. Some homes do not feel comfortable with definitions at all. There are even different definitions used by different medical and charitable organisations.

We’ve spoken to hundreds of care seekers looking for dementia care where there are other considerations to take into account. Finding care for someone living with dementia usually requires the care seeker to embark on a steep learning curve. Many care seekers are unable to form an opinion as to what stage of dementia their loved one is living with. Those that do often get it wrong, overcompensating or undercompensating compared to a care home’s assessment.

Nevertheless, we believe that an indication of the Dementia Care Type provided by each home is useful and necessary. We believe it will ensure that the majority of enquiries your carehome.co.uk profile generates will be from relevant dementia care seekers.

How we define the Dementia Care Types

We have selected a 3-stage scale with an additional option for care homes that are able to care for residents with dementia and verbally or physically abusive behaviour. We have heavily leaned on definitions used by Alzhiemers.org and Dementia UK.

Select all that apply to your care home:

Mild Dementia

Someone living with our definition of “mild dementia” might experience some or all the following:

• Memory problems such as misplacing items and not being able to recall recent events. (However, in some forms of dementia a person’s memory may be unchanged.)

• Difficulties thinking through problems and planning, making decisions.

• Language and communication issues such as finding it difficult to recall the appropriate word in a conversation or following a conversation.

• Poor orientation, getting lost in areas previously familiar to them

• Difficulty judging distances (more falls than usual)

• Changes in their normal mood including anxiety and depression

In certain types of dementia, personality and behaviour changes may be present alongside or instead of issues with memory or concentration.

Moderate Dementia

Someone living with our definition of “moderate dementia” might experience some or all the following:

• Worsened memory problems. Not always recognising own family members and friends. Repeating the same questions repeatedly

• Worsened language and communication issues, forgetting what they are saying mid-sentence. Not being able to understand what someone else is saying

• More frequent confusion, e.g. about the time of day or where they are, including their own home

• Apathy, depression and anxiety

• Believing things that aren’t true (paranoia)

• Frequent hallucinations

• Lack of emotional control, quick to anger, fearfulness, sadness

• Loss of inhibition

• Difficulties sleeping or waking during the night and behaving as though it is daytime – loss of circadian rhythm.

Advanced Dementia

Someone living with our definition of “advanced dementia” might experience some or all of the following:

• Very little memory of recent events. Believing they are living in an earlier period of their life.

• Not recognising familiar objects, places and people, including themselves in a mirror

• Loss of vocabulary to a few sentences or words

• Depression, anxiety, acting distressed and apathetic

• Frequent hallucinations

• Restlessness, appearing to be searching for something

• Decreased mobility, walking more slowly and spending more time in a chair or bed

• Needing a lot of help to eat

• Difficulty swallowing

• Losing control of their bladder and bowels

Advanced Dementia with Verbally or Physically Aggressive Behaviour

Select this option if your home is suitable for people living with dementia that are often verbally or physically aggressive and/or pose a threat to themselves or others. When you select this option, two more “either/or” fields appear.

Select whether you are a home that cares for different levels of dementia and the care for residents living with advanced dementia and verbally or physically aggressive behaviour occurs in a separate unit, or that you are a care home that cares for residents living with advanced dementia and verbally or physically aggressive behaviour only.

This extra information ensures that the Care Help Team are providing the most relevant enquiries to your care home.

Vital information for care homes that provide care for Advanced Dementia with Verbally and Physically Aggressive Behaviour

We want to identify the few care homes that can provide this type of care to match care seekers that know they need it.

To begin with, this information will only be available to our Care Help Team for care seekers who contact our Help Line.

We will not display this information on profile pages until we have created a user experience that makes it clear that potential residents with dementia at a milder level are not endangered in homes that provide this type of care (as this type of care is provided in a separate area from other levels of dementia care).

If you select this option, you will be asked to select whether your care home that only cares for residents living with advanced dementia with verbally or physically abusive behaviour, or a care home that cares for different levels of dementia with a separate unit for residents with verbally or physically abusive behaviour. This information will also initially only be used by our Care Help Team to ensure that relevant care homes are included on care seeker’s shortlists we generate.

Why we have chosen this scale

Our main consideration when choosing this scale concerns the user experience of the care seeker on carehome.co.uk. As mentioned, there is a huge amount of learning a care seeker needs to do to choose the best care home for their loved one. Before landing on carehome.co.uk a care seeker is quite often confused, stressed and bombarded with complex decisions to make.

At carehome.co.uk we believe it is important to give the care seeker all the information about a care home possible to compare and choose which homes to send enquiries to. This means that our profile pages contain many datapoints varying in importance due to each care seeker's situation, it is important that we choose a simple scale that can be digested quickly alongside all the other information.

Want to find out more?

We’re always looking for feedback from our clients about how to improve carehome.co.uk. If you have any questions about Dementia Care Types, or anything else, please contact your account manager.