It is, in essence, a meeting place for like-minded people to be introduced. In reality, a Dementia Café is truly wonderful for people with dementia and their partners, who often have to be with them 24/7.
Dementia Australia organises dementia cafes throughout the nation and also help fund others, such as Not For Profit NoosaCare’s fortnightly Dementia Café on the Sunshine Coast, which began in 2018.
There are 472,000 Australians living with dementia and almost 1.6 million people involved in their care. Dementia encompasses a number of illnesses that cause a progressive decline in a person’s functioning, including Alzheimer’s disease.
Rosa Woegerer, whose husband John is in full-time care after being diagnosed with dementia, explains exactly what life often becomes.
“You not only lose the people who have dementia or Alzheimer’s … [you]also lose friends left, right and centre because people can’t seem to cope,” she told the ABC.
“I find it difficult sometimes with John to have a conversation going, you talk about something and the next second he is talking about something completely different, where you have no idea what he’s talking about and people find that a bit off-putting.”
The Dementia Café is a welcome respite.
“So that makes it difficult for me to have a social life to a certain extent but this for me is part of a social life because those people understand, they’ve been through or go through the same thing,” she said.
Cafe facilitator Danah Wood said, on advice from Dementia Australia, the café has released an updated resource including advice on how to discuss dementia in a more inclusive and sensitive way.
What a wonderful initiative.
