“A personal approach to
Dementia care”
What We Do
At DOTS, our expertise is in teaching families and care givers how to care for someone living with dementia and younger onset dementia.
Our services include:
1. Case Management Service
Our case management service will help you negotiate your way through My Aged Care and the various paperwork necessary to ensure that your loved one receives all the help that they are eligible for. We work together with GPs and geriatricians ensuring that all possible services in place.
2. Family Education Seminars
Our family seminar explains a dementia diagnosis and how it affects an individual’s functioning on a day to day basis. These sessions also includes strategies of the best way to interact with loved ones and manage any challenging behaviours that may arise. Sessions can be run online via Zoom or in person.
3. Home Assessment
Our home visits are vital to assess safety in the home and ensure clients living with dementia are able to live as independently as possible whilst remaining safe.
4. The COPE Program
The COPE program is 10 session ongoing evidence based program. It addresses challenging behaviours and the best ways to manage them. Additionally, we will discuss ideas and implementation of activities to make clients lives as meaningful as possible.
For more information about COPE, see https://www.copeprogram.com.au
Fees are claimable from:
- Medicare (5 sessions) as part of EPC Plan of Management
- Private Health Funds (under Occupational Therapy)
- NDIS, specifically for Younger Onset Dementia (if applicable)
- Some possible funding may be available under DVA
These are some of the areas we can assist with:
Safety in the home
You will receive a written report with recommendations on what you need to do to improve the physical and cognitive safety of your home.
We’ll ensure our recommendations are understood and adaptations to the home have been made. We can project manage the installation of technology or infrastructure improvements to the home.
Activities of Daily Living
We’ll show you how to assist your loved one with the basic and advanced self care skills. With a focus on helping them to be as independent as possible. And, where they do need assistance we’ll show you how to do this and maintain dignity of your loved one.
Needs based behaviour or challenging behaviour
Often the behaviours displayed by someone with dementia are described as challenging or difficult. The truth is they are in fact simply driven by the person's needs. We train you with strategies to help you manage what appear to be challenging and difficult behaviours.
Delusional behaviour
We’ll train how to manage delusional behaviours and hallucinations and provide a sense of calm to your loved one.
Meaningful activities
We use an approach called Occupational Performance which allows us to help you adapt an activity to suit your loved ones level of ability. This allows you to feel more confident when it comes to creating meaningful activities knowing that your loved ones will be happier and more engaged.
Memory loss
One of the things we suggest is creating a life story book that captures special moments, early childhood, weddings, children, grandchildren, interests and travel.
This helps to provide a sense of security and stability for your loved one and a framework for you and your family to have discussions.
Having difficulty visiting or engaging with someone with Dementia
We train you to be prepared. We help you explore the things you know they're interested in and taking something from the list you create with you when you visit.
For example a photo, an object or it may just be a cake. It’s something to share and discuss. This helps you to have meaningful engaging visits with your loved one.
