Introduction: dementia home care in India (includes download)

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In India, almost all persons with dementia are cared for at home; caregiving is done by, or coordinated by family members. To effectively support dementia care in India, contributors need to understand the challenges faced by home caregivers, and how home care differs from care provided in facilities designed for persons with dementia. On this page:

In light of the COVID 19 challenge and its severe impact on dementia home care, please look at the section on COVID below.

• Why it is important to understand home care situations
• Introducing the Dementia Caregivers
• Dementia Home Care in India (download available)
• Dementia Home Care During COVID-19
• Additional references/ resources

Why it is important to understand home care situations

Understanding and appreciating home care situations is necessary to be able to provide effective advice for multiple situations. Examples where this understanding is required to help caregivers include:

• Assist home caregivers in accepting dementia, adjusting their lives for care, learning necessary dementia caregiving skills
• Counsel families that are stressed or are facing problems balancing the caregiving work with other responsibilities
• Help families evaluate the pros and cons of options like day care and respite care
• Enable smooth transitions for persons from full home-based care to arrangements that include use of day care, respite care, or long-term residential stay facilities.

Understanding home care realities is also necessary for persons designing services for families.

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Introducing the Dementia Caregivers

The presentation below provides an introduction to the caregiver role and what care activities are. You can view the document at Slideshare if the viewer below does not load properly.

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Dementia Home Care in India (download available)

This brief document below provides a quick overview of the dementia home care situation in India. You can view the document at Slideshare if the viewer below does not load properly. (Or download as PDF here: Dementia Home Care: Context and Challenges in India)

(Download as PDF here: Dementia Home Care: Context and Challenges in India)

This presentation is released by me under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License license. This means you can use it for non-commercial purposes so long as you include the copyright line “(c) Swapna Kishore, 2010”. If you create derivative works, they should also be made available under a similar license. For further information on copyright, go to this link. For uses outside the scope of the license, contact me.

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Dementia Home Care During COVID-19

The COVID-19 situation has created additional challenges for families already trying to cope with dementia home care. These include additional steps required to keep the person safe from infection, and also adjusting care to the multiple constraints and restrictions imposed due to COVID. View a presentation on this here: Dementia home care during COVID 19 (presented at AP HRDI, May 2020) or in the player below.

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Additional references/ resources

• Detailed discussions on care context and challenges for home care in India: Understand caregiving realities, issues, challenges
• An earlier blog entry discussing this: Understanding dementia home care in India

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Pages in this section:

Resources: If you want to help caregivers/ spread dementia awareness

• Understand dementia and care in the Indian context
  • Overview of current and future prevalence, care challenges, and possible actions
  • Introduction: dementia home care in India (includes download)
  • Understand caregiving realities, issues, challenges
  • Policies, schemes, laws in India relevant for the dementia domain
• Action Areas to Contribute to, and Possible Approaches
• Community-level work: A Dementia-Friendly India
• Focus: Improve Dementia Awareness
  • Conduct Dementia Awareness Programs (includes download)
  • Train/ educate/ sensitize healthcare professionals on dementia and care realities
  • Use Technology like the Internet and mobile for awareness/ support
  • Additional ideas to improve dementia awareness
• Focus: Create Dementia Services and Products, Facilitate Support Forums
  • Special Clinics for Dementia (Memory Clinics) in India
  • Provide Trained attendants for dementia home care
  • Create dementia care support groups (includes download)
  • More potential dementia services, products, and community support areas
• Project ideas for students, artists, and others