Dementia Together

Dementia Together was started by Cindy Luzinski in 2015 as a volunteer initiative. While most dementia nonprofits are focused on finding a cure and raising awareness, Dementia Together focuses instead on helping those with dementia and their caregivers live well and with joy. The organization was one of the first North American practitioners of the SPECAL® method (also known as the contented dementia approach), an approach to dementia care that treats the condition as a disability rather than a terminal illness. SPECAL® uses a photograph album metaphor to explain dementia from the patient's point of view and how their ability to store factual and emotional information changes as they age and their condition progresses.

Dementia Together offers a wide range of programs including memory cafes, support groups, SPECAL® training, meal drops, patient-resource materials, and dementia-friendly education for businesses, government agencies, and community organizations. Last year Dementia Together served over 2,000 individuals across 775 sessions including memory cafes, support groups, training, and community presentations.

Character

Many of the staff and board members of Dementia Together came to the organization as a result of their own experience with dementia, whether that be through working in the health care or memory care fields or personally caring for a loved one with dementia. Even after no longer working with the organization as a client or care provider, many of these people stay as volunteers, staff members, or board members.

The staff and volunteers often refer to clients as "our people", reflecting their investment in and responsibility for the people they serve. Part of Dementia Together's mission is to ensure no one has to walk the dementia journey alone, and the staff and volunteers work toward this goal not just through the programming offered by the organization but also through the personal relationships and friendships that are nurtured with clients.

Culture

While most employees and volunteers working with Dementia Together have past experience with dementia care in some capacity, the organization does not make it a requirement to have this specific experience. More important than experience with dementia care is a commitment to the organization's core values, a desire to take initiative, demonstrated creativity and flexibility, and an attitude of care and understanding toward people with dementia.

Dementia Together also makes it a point to get honest feedback from its clients. The organization has an advisory board of current dementia patients, who are recognized as the experts in their own condition. Dementia Together also has participated in scientific studies, such as one evaluating the B Sharp Arts Engagement program, a collaboration between Dementia Together and the Fort Collins Symphony. The research indicated that participants with dementia demonstrated improved cognition while care partners reported three main benefits including relationship building, restored humanity, and increased positivity.

Customers

One important aspect of the SPECAL® method is the acronym PAST, which stands for:

- Personal Worth,
- Autonomy,
- Social Ease, and
- Trust

To reinforce the Personal Worth of their clients, Dementia Together works hard to treat people as similarly as possible. The SPECAL® method recognizes the dementia patient as the expert in their own condition and encourages them to take as active a role in their own care and treatment as possible. As a result, the organization has received feedback that when visiting a memory cafe, it is difficult to impossible to tell who is a dementia patient and who is a caregiver.

Dementia Together also works to navigate difficult conversations with clients in an honest and positive way. Care facilities can be a challenging topic as the organization wants to provide its clients with valuable information, but not speak negatively about providers it hopes to help and work with in the future. The organization has chosen to give honest answers about whether a facility or provider is on board with the contented dementia approach at that time, but also being positive and proactive with raising awareness and providing education to those providers.

Community

Dementia Together has built relationships with many community organizations and businesses both to provide programming for clients and to educate the community about ways businesses, government agencies, and other organizations can become more dementia friendly. In addition to the B Sharp Arts Engagement program, another example of such a partnership is with Emporium Sports, who provides Dementia Together clients with a chance to play pool free of charge in a more dementia-friendly environment (for example turning down music, which can be distressing to dementia patients).

Dementia Together also provides all its education (as well as all its other services) free of charge. Examples of the types of organizations that have received this education include churches, law enforcement, care facilities, and local businesses. Dementia Together also works with other community partners such as the Office on Aging with both Larimer and Weld County to get additional services for clients such as respite care grants, mechanical pets, and weighted blankets.