Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of figures and tables
- Notes on contributors
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Introduction: Placing dementia
- 2 Understanding the meaning of neighbourhoods for people living with dementia: the value of a relational lens
- 3 Moving house with dementia
- 4 How do people with dementia manage problematic situations in public spaces?
- 5 Making and maintaining neighbourhood connections when living alone with dementia
- 6 My neighbourhood, my future ...?
- 7 Enabling the neighbourhood: a case for rethinking dementia-friendly communities
- 8 A conceptual framework of the person– environment interaction in the neighbourhood among persons living with dementia: a focus on out-of-home mobility
- 9 We’re known as ‘the girls’ around town: support, isolation and belonging for a lesbian couple living with dementia
- 10 Building community capacity for dementia in Canada: new directions in new places
- 11 The good, the challenging and the supportive: mapping life with dementia in the community
- 12 Growing back into community: changes through life with dementia
- 13 Dementia, tourism and leisure: making the visitor economy dementia friendly
- 14 Conclusion: Dementia emplaced
- Index
7 - Enabling the neighbourhood: a case for rethinking dementia-friendly communities
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 May 2022
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of figures and tables
- Notes on contributors
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Introduction: Placing dementia
- 2 Understanding the meaning of neighbourhoods for people living with dementia: the value of a relational lens
- 3 Moving house with dementia
- 4 How do people with dementia manage problematic situations in public spaces?
- 5 Making and maintaining neighbourhood connections when living alone with dementia
- 6 My neighbourhood, my future ...?
- 7 Enabling the neighbourhood: a case for rethinking dementia-friendly communities
- 8 A conceptual framework of the person– environment interaction in the neighbourhood among persons living with dementia: a focus on out-of-home mobility
- 9 We’re known as ‘the girls’ around town: support, isolation and belonging for a lesbian couple living with dementia
- 10 Building community capacity for dementia in Canada: new directions in new places
- 11 The good, the challenging and the supportive: mapping life with dementia in the community
- 12 Growing back into community: changes through life with dementia
- 13 Dementia, tourism and leisure: making the visitor economy dementia friendly
- 14 Conclusion: Dementia emplaced
- Index
Summary
Introduction
Neighbourhoods have been integral to the rapid changes occurring within dementia care in recent years, although have not always been acknowledged as such. Dementia, like aged and mental health care before it has been absorbed into a project of deinstitutionalisation occurring within healthcare systems across much of the affluent west (Anttonen and Karsio, 2016). In the UK, deinstitutionalising dementia has involved large-scale reductions to hospital beds available to people with dementia and reduced duration of stay (Alzheimer's Society, 2009). In basic terms, it has meant the relocation of care and support from one type of material and social setting to another, and as such marks a changing geography of care. In many parts of Europe, this ‘re-placing’ of dementia care has not stalled at the shift to community-based support. The ongoing retrenchment of public services driven by a policy of fiscal consolidation (that is austerity) has led to widespread closures of traditional council-led day care services (Needham, 2014) alongside tightening of eligibility criteria for admission to care homes and for Continuing Health Care (RCN, 2012), resulting in significant reductions in collective forms of community-based provision. People with dementia are increasingly less likely to be clustered in designated care settings while segregated from the wider community. Instead, policy intentions have shifted to supporting people to age in place through a focus on Personalisation (DoH, 2019; Malbon et al, 2019; Manthorpe and Samsi, 2016). However, as with aged care before it, concerns have been raised over the extent of an existing neighbourhood infrastructure to adequately respond to such changes in dementia care (for example, Miranda-Castillo et al, 2010). The potential danger is that people living with the condition may become, in Rowles’ (1978) terms, ‘prisoners of space’; facing the prospect of social isolation and domestic confinement as their lifeworld constricts (Alzheimer's Society, 2013; Moyle at el, 2011).
The advent of the ‘dementia-friendly community’ (DFC), following in the wake of the age-friendly cities movement (WHO, 2007), might be read as a vehicle for policy to address these concerns. Interestingly in the UK, the approach differs between countries. In Scotland, dementia is a devolved matter, with the Holyrood government setting policy which acknowledges the importance of DFCs through the National Dementia Strategy (Scottish Government, 2017).
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Dementia and PlacePractices, Experiences and Connections, pp. 94 - 112Publisher: Bristol University PressPrint publication year: 2021