"As most of you are aware, ARDSI Hyderabad Deccan has been running an Activity centre for persons with Dementia for the past one year. It runs twice a week at the Sunder Nagar community centre, on every Tuesday and Saturday, and offers respite care to persons with Dementia for 3 hours.
At present we offer recreational, educational & group activities for persons with dementia to retain and enhance their skills, increase their self-esteem and improve their quality of life. Starting this month, we will be providing periodic updates on the work at the centre.
The Activity centre starts with a group warm-up and individual activities in the first half. In the later part, we have group activities, concluding with watering of plants and singing National anthem.
On an average we have 8 persons with dementia who attend the centre. To provide high-quality recreation, in addition to ARDSI staff, we are assisted by volunteers from ARDSI Hyderabad Deccan, Aasara-GHMC, Montessori Research Institute and Training centre, family members and also patient’s attendants. We also have a monthly visit by a doctor for general check-up of the patients.
Every effort is put in to establish a person-centered activity schedule. Depending on the individual’s interest, they are involved in different activities such as. We’ve tried to broad-base activities into:
Stimulating mental activities: Puzzles, Brain Vita, Pcitionary, Reading, Naming, Flash cards, chanting religious verses
Recreational: Caroms, Rangoli, Colour kits, painting, baking (where the recipe was broken down into steps and was handed over to each patient to help complete the task), planting, dancing, singing
Reminiscence: Using maps, photo albums, pictures, songs and other materials to trigger discussion on past events and recall happy memories
Motor skills improvement: Beading, Stringing, Montessori approach – Belt frame, Dominoes, Wooden Blocks, Clips, Clay modelling
Physical activities: Shuttle, Ring, Ball, and Flying Disc
Efforts are underway to provide a comprehensive functional rehabilitation program, based on appropriate interventions, for which we are introducing an innovative activity each month. In the month of April, we worked on Memory album activity, where we asked family members to get photos of the person with dementia taken for different occasion [like their Birthdays, Family outings, with their kids and so on] and had an activity that involves preparing the album. It worked well, especially with some who hardly communicate, yet were very much involved in that activity.
An extremely popular group activity which has great participation from all is the group singing actiivty. Each person sings a song of their choice, sometimes joined by a chorus. We provide lyrics sheets as aids when required.
We would like to thank the Sundernagar Senior Citizen Association and Aasara-GHMC for providing us space to run the Activity centre, and also the family members and volunteers who have been co-operating with us to run the centre. As always we look to suggestions from you to improve and take this to the next level".
Please click the following link to view the photos.
https://picasaweb.google.com/safiya1012/ActivityCentreReportApril2011?authkey=Gv1sRgCPWkrpzh3vv5Ng#
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