Dementia Support Group - Additional Information and Resources

Additional Information and Resources: 

The Dementia Society of Ottawa has the ability to provide coaches as well as various activity packages which may be useful to continue to connect with our loved ones Here is the link for this resource: https://dementiahelp.ca/activities/lending-library/ 

We’ve started talking about a Care Planning Checklist for Caregivers and these are divided into three sections. The first one is for the early stages and is useful to help everyone cope with changes. Here’s the link from the Dementia Society: https://dementiahelp.ca/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/Care-Planning-Check-List-Early-Stages-2.pdf The second one is for the middle stages. Again, here’s the link: https://dementiahelp.ca/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/Care-Planning-Check-List-Middle-Stages-2.pdf

You may enjoy a podcast called Let’s Not Be Kidding featuring Gavin Crawford.  It is a seven-episode story of his journey with his mother through her experience with Alzheimer’s https://www.cbc.ca/listen/cbc-podcasts/1387-let-s-not-be-kidding-with-gavin-crawford  

We can also recommend a CBC Doc called The Caregivers’ Club, a candid and intimate portrait of three caregivers, each taking care of a spouse or patient with dementia. https://www.cbc.ca/cbcdocspov/episodes/the-caregivers-club  

We would like to be able to provide you with some items for your reading pleasure as well. We are starting with Still Alice by Lisa Genova as well as One Good Thing by Alexandra Potter. We’ve run across a book entitled Life Giving Dementia Care by Toni Kanzler. This is not an endorsement by any means but purely recommended for your enjoyment. 

Lastly, we talked about Go Wish cards, cards which are conversation starters for difficult topics, most especially end of life conversations. These can be found at https://codaalliance.org/go-wish/