Our best wishes to all the families and professionals being impacted by floods around Australia, especially those delivering dementia care throughout all this!
Our updates in March include:
We are very excited to introduce the “View as” feature in the PRO, a world-first function that allows a professional to anticipate a clients’ needs, map out their unique journey and guide them through it, including the next stage of an assessment or care planning
New Sections on financial support for "Aids and equipment” for each State/Territory under the Topic "Healthy living and ageing for the person"
Resource link update for Companion card program in SA under the Topic “Subsidies and support to help the carer”.
Note: Please refresh your browser to see the updates.
“View as” feature in the PRO
Because dementia touches on all aspects of life, it’s very difficult to know where to start, what you may have missed, what to ask in an assessment or care review, or what to do next in a care plan.
When you select this view (e.g. "View as Bill Smith & Jane Smith"), you can:
Use the Topics and Sections to ask the questions to anticipate your clients’ needs, map out their unique journey and guide them through it, including the next stage of an assessment or care planning
Track the number of Sections shared and what you have done to see their progression through their journey
Over time, almost all relevant Topics and Sections can be shared, discussed or printed out for your clients. This is because, while each person’s journey is unique, dementia is progressive in nature and touches on all aspects of life, so almost all clients and their families will go through the majority of the Topics and Sections in their journey.
You can also create a profile to view as them after you have shared an item with them, which then tallies their progress with a counter in the middle column. We hope this helps you to make sense of this complex journey for your clients and carers.
This is the world's first interactive whole-of-dementia checklist and we would like to thank all our dedicated volunteers and PRO pilot participants for their generous suggestions.
Note: all tutorials and scenarios have been updated accordingly so don’t forget to view them in the Topic “Welcome to PRO! Start tutorial here”.
Content updates
New Sections on financial support for “Aids and equipment"
Carer Gateway removed their resources on financial support for “Aids and equipment”. As a result, we have created equivalent Sections linking to your State/Territory’s specific information, including what it is, who is eligible and how to apply.
Note, each State/Territory has different requirements and subsidies for different aids and equipment.
After refreshing your browser, you can search for it in "More Topics" tab (CARER app) or "All info" tab (PRO app), with keywords such as “aids equipment” etc.
Section update for Companion Card program in SA
Following the SA Companion Card website merging with the SA Government's website, we have updated this under the Topic “Subsidies and support to help the carer”.
After refreshing your browser, you can search the above content updates in the "More Topics" tab (CARER app) or "All info" tab (PRO app), with keywords such as “companion card” etc.
Note: minor updates are not documented here, such as some wording changes, URL changes, reference updates etc.
Featured Tips
This month’s featured Tip is from Tanya, who is trying to helping her father to be more engaged in activities:
"My dad was no longer showing interest in things he used to enjoy. He doesn't even watch TV now as he can't follow along with what's happening. But we try to keep him active as much as possible. I may read a story or magazine article to him in the evening, we go for a walk around lunchtime, painting seems to relax his mind and makes him feel productive and rewarding (we have him painting a tree or two for our new home)."
This is a good reminder that despite a dementia diagnosis, the person can still engage in meaningful activities which can give them meaning and pleasure to life. Knowing the person and their preferences can help with finding activities for everyone to enjoy.
This Tip can be found under the Section “Introduction to helping the person to engage in activities” under the Topic “Getting the person engaged in daily living and activities”.