An Offaly educator is set to speak at the upcoming Alzheimer Europe Conference in Dublin’s Convention Centre.
Dr Fergus Timmons, Learning & Development Quality, Innovation and Growth Manager with the Alzheimer Society of Ireland, oversees the charity’s family carer training programme, providing information and support to family carers of those living with dementia.
Dr Timmons has also been involved in research exploring family carers’ experiences of the programme, and will be presenting on this work at the conference.
The educator will explain why support networks are so vital for families caring for loved ones with dementia.
“I will be outlining the article I wrote for the Frontiers journal on family care training,” the Tullamore man told the Irish Independent.
“I have been working with the society since 2013, we’ve grown the number of course and people we support over the years. When I started in 2013 it was 300 per year, to around 1,400 this year,” he explained.
“In our online course, we encourage people to tell us about themselves, their own care situation, and to share their experience. By and large, people find comfort from ideas and reassurance from other course participants,” he explained.
“People caring for someone with dementia can find it quite emotional and feel very helpless. There’s a lot of emotions and guilt. People don’t have anywhere to bring those emotions, a lot of people don’t understand what it’s like,” he said.
“On courses we have 12 to 15 people with life experience creating a community and purpose. We look into how people get that peer support, what it means and looks like. It doesn’t work for everybody, but it works for most,” he said.
Dr Timmons noted that the course sees participants enrol nationally and abroad, from places as far as Australia and Canada.
“I believe education can change lives. It’s corny, but I do. The course has changed people for the better, we see it in the feedback. It allows people to open up conversations in the household, just even saying thing out loud and writing them can be really therapeutic,” he said.
The Tullamore man finds that sadly, there is still much stigma surrounding a dementia diagnosis.
“It’s unfortunate, but it’s a reality. We believe in talking about it and getting it into the open. Once you start talking about it, it won’t be as bad,” he said.
“With early stages, the person diagnoses might not want it known that they have dementia. They don’t tell their friends as they’re worried about the reaction.
“If you mention dementia, people tend to think of a vulnerable person in late stages. A person can live with it for a number of years,” Dr Timmons said.
“There’s a fear that it could impact your social life, if you’re under 60 there’s a fear when it comes to employment. People tend to be reluctant to admit a diagnosis, and the family may not talk about it out of respect for the person.
“The amount of people we have had in our course who have said, ‘I wish I had done this five years ago’, is astounding,” he finished.
Dr Timmons will present his session ‘Why Intimacy Matters in Dementia Care through the Dem I CARE Project’ on Tuesday, October 27 in the Wicklow room at Dublin’s Convention Centre.
For more information on the Training for Family Carers and Supporters course, see the Alzheimer Society of Ireland’s website.