Training for Professionals

Frena Gray-Davidson will inspire your staff, equip them with new skills and leave them with a set of working tools for the future. Careworkers transform by taking a new view and a new approach to people with Dementia. Frena has the charisma to get their attention, the knowledge to change their methods and the spiritual capacity to truly inspire them for years to come. Your staff recognize that Frena's been there, she's done it and they can do it too.

WORKSHOP 1: What's REALLY
Going on in Dementia?

When we care for people with Alzheimer's, we CANNOT meet their needs if we dismiss their symptoms. If we ask ourselves WHAT those symptoms really mean, then we can create nurturing care for our residents. When we create a nurturing care environment, behavior problems are reduced and staff turnover is reduced. Everyone wins.

In this workshop, participants will learn:

• WHAT behaviors really mean;
• HOW to meet the needs expressed by those behaviors;
• WHY we must do that.

Using this knowledge, participants will be able to revise their understanding of resident behaviors; they will be able to reduce the stress levels of residents; they will make better relationships with residents and they will transform their own work environment.

Problem-solving Clinic:

This workshop will also include a problem-solving clinic for your staff, relevant to your own residents. This will enable your staff to create more effective care plans.

WORKSHOP 2: Dealing with
Difficult Behaviors

If we could speak the language of difficult behaviors, we could create a combat-free day in the Alzheimer's Care Unit. Regard this as a language lesson.

We will take each of the most common so-called difficult behaviors and concentrate on solving them. The behaviors will include:

• wandering
• combativeness
• repetitive behaviors
• sun-downing
• showering and toileting problems
• wanting parents, home or to leave
• hoarding
• so-called delusions and hallucinations

Skills taught will include:

• effective listening
• appropriate responses
• use of guidance modes, including distraction, redirection and emotional fulfillment as a way of solving problems.

Problem-solving Clinic

This workshop will also include a problem-solving clinic for your staff, relevant to your own residents. This will enable your staff to create more effective interventions.

About Frena's Workshops

Behavioral problems are communications about unmet needs. By learning successful interventions, communication skills and developing meaningful interactions with such residents, we can create care which nurtures their spirits and meets their needs. This leads to a huge reduction in such behaviors.

Your staff will learn:

• to decode the real meaning of problem behaviors;
• to intervene successfully with residents who show such behaviors;
• to avoid confrontations while achieving peaceful resolutions;
• to communicate successfully with residents;
• to apply her unique Three Point Plan to all behavioral problems and therefore to construct care plans that really work.

Follow-up training for CEUs is possible through on-line training and through use of Training Units, presented on DVD and with texts for testing included.

All professional training workshops are 2-1/2 hours long. A day's training is, at minimum, 5 hours long.

WORKSHOP 3: Improving
Dementia Communication Skills

This workshop will concentrate on training staff to interact and communicate more effectively with residents with dementia. In doing this, they will be much more alert to any ways in which their own handling skills can affect the comfort levels of residents with dementia.

It will include the following:

• body language
• interacting at the right speed
• correct postures for interactions comforting to residents
• cueing
• voice levels
• idea complexity
• use of rational argument
• listening with heart
• using intuition

Staff will role-play a variety of interventions and demonstrate the use of each. A problem-solving clinic relevant to special needs of actual residents will be an important part of this workshop.