Plan and Begin: Self-Group for Carers of People with Dementia

This report outlines the plan to establish a self-help group for caregivers of individuals with dementia, focusing on providing mutual support, sharing experiences, and enhancing knowledge about the disease. The group aims to address the challenges faced by caregivers, including family members and friends, by offering a platform to share feelings, access information, and promote self-care. The report details the group's objectives, the recruitment strategies, and the services to be offered, such as care packages, access to day centers, and a helpline. The author, taking on a leadership role, emphasizes the importance of participative leadership and effective communication to ensure the group's success. The report also highlights the impact of dementia on the broader community, not just the affected individuals, underscoring the importance of comprehensive support. The conclusion emphasizes the need for multiple leaders to effectively manage the group's activities and ensure the well-being of both patients and their caregivers.

Plan and Begin the Group

Topic: A self-group for carers of people with Dementia
A self-help group can be defined as a support group, where people are worked for
accomplishment of a common goal. To begin with this concept, a group is formed for supporting
people and carer takers of those individuals that are suffering from dementia. The main purpose
of this group behind support is to enhance knowledge of carer takers, including family members,
friends and all other people who are affected by such disease, about its symptoms and causes, so
that they can provide better care (Cheston and Marshall, 2019). Offering a break and chance to
caregivers to get out of the house, will help in encouraging them to take care of themselves for
well-being. A support group also provides an opportunity to caregivers for sharing their feelings,
ideas and problems, who are undergoing with similar experiences. This would help carer takers
in paying more attention to their own needs as well as begin to care of themselves. Sharing and
helping others, in such manner, provides the satisfaction. Thus, plan for organising a self-group
of people with dementia includes following main aims –
 To support caregivers to meet and provide mutual help on a regular basis
 To enable caregivers to share their feelings and experiences with others who are facing
same problems
 To provide an opportunity to caregivers to acknowledge more about dementia and cope
out from same
Dementia refers to complex condition where experience of every affected person is different.
However, many individuals living with dementia may face similar challenges like difficulty in
communication. Therefore, a small change can make a big difference for them in avoiding such
difficulties or frustration (Davis, Deane and Lyons, 2019). For this purpose, an approach or
support of self-care team can help such people in building and maintaining the good relationships
with their family members. This early intervention team will support 340 people that are either
suffered from dementia or affected by such individuals. At initial stage, respective team includes
only five members, where to recruit more interested people who want to join this group, some
techniques will be used. It includes announcement on radio and television to advertise of
community events; publish notice of meeting in local newspaper; and some posters will also be
placed nearby hospitals, community centres, pharmacies and more. These advertising techniques
will help in bringing awareness about how this self-care team will help caregivers in well-being
from dementia. It includes place and timings where meeting will be held, contact numbers and
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website from where interested people can get more information. Service that will be given by
such team includes, a good package of care, which is different for everyone because it depends
on needs and requirement of persons with dementia and their family. Through support and social
service, people with dementia can easily access the day centres and hospitals, in case of needs
assessment. As flexible short term breaks consider more vital for the individuals with dementia
and their caretakers. Therefore, this can be organised via social services of this team, through a
carer’s needs assessment. A helpline and email service named by Nursing Dementia Care, will
be provided, so that people can contact for professional care and support, to well-being from
dementia.
As planning and organising of a self-care team may arise a number of problems in front
of group members. It includes schedule of meeting, topic arrangement that need to discuss with
interested people to provide self-care, organise activities and support to help dementia people,
etc. (Friedlander, 2019). Therefore, to manage these problems and as a team-member, I have
taken the responsibility of leadership. To being a leader, I will concern on creating an
environment where people with dementia and other care takers can feel comfortable to share
their feelings and experience. Role of leader is vital for success of a team, in this regard, to
encourage people for participation and help in achievement of team’s objectives, I will concern
on developing the effective communication. In setting the group, participative leadership style
refers to be best, where ideas and suggestions of all group-members taken to develop activities.
So, adoption of this style helps in arranging timely meetings and getting support of every team-
member, for success of group. Since, leading a team can be emotionally draining, where one-to-
one support helps a leader in performing their responsibility more efficiently. Therefore, being
able to talk to someone else on such activities, having two leaders refers to be a good idea. So, I
have also recruited another person from interested people, to join team and help in leading others
effectively. This would help in managing the activities, by reviewing the rules, stating purpose
and aim to every group-member, sharing timely information about meetings with interested
people and timely provide support to dementia patients and their care takers (Castellà‐Creus and
et. al., 2019).
To explore and identify an area of difficult practices within health and social care, the topic
which I have chosen is ‘people affected by dementia’. For this purpose, I have worked under a
group of five members, to plan and organise a self-care team who will provide support to
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dementia people and families by admiral nursing services. At initial stage, intellectually, I have
felt that dementia affect only those people who are having this disease. But working on this
topic, I have analysed that individuals including family members, friends and society that
surround such people, are also faced issues, in providing care and well-being of them (Balan,
2019). Therefore, focusing on this concept, I have prepared the main purpose about forming this
team. Along with this, in setting practices, I have adopted participated leadership style that helps
me in understanding needs and requirement of every team-member in accomplishment of their
assigned rules. It has also been analysed that for running such a group a number of members are
required, therefore, to lead them more than one leader is required. So, in future, if I got chance to
plan activities for making a group, I will focus on this point also i.e. including at least two
members who will take responsibility of leadership.
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REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Friedlander, M. A. (2019). Sadat and Begin: The domestic politics of peacemaking. Routledge.
Castellà‐Creus, M. & et. al. (2019). Individualization process of the standardized care plan in
acute care hospitalization units: Study protocol. Journal of advanced nursing. 75(1).
197-204.
Balan, A. (2019). Investigating the feasibility of using student reflective journals to understand
how clinical legal education can develop the ethical competence of law students. The
Law Teacher, 1-13.
Davis, E. L., Deane, F. P., & Lyons, G. C. (2019). An acceptance and commitment therapy self-
help intervention for carers of patients in palliative care: Protocol of a feasibility
randomised controlled trial. Journal of health psychology. 24(5). 685-704.
Cheston, R., & Marshall, A. (2019). The Living Well with Dementia Course: A Workbook for
Facilitators. Routledge.
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