A toe in the water: Person-centred counselling approaches to working with people with dementia

Abstract

Written by three different authors from three different professional backgrounds this article shows the varied ways in which the Person Centred Approach to working with people with dementia is being used in Sussex. The authors, Pamela Bruce-Hay, a Person-Centred Counsellor at Salvington Lodge Hospital, Worthing, Penny Dodds, a Nursing Lecturer Practitioner in West Sussex, and Sally Stapleton, a Clinical Psychologist in Worthing and West Sussex travelled along very different paths each developing a distinctive approach to Person-Centred practice. In the article which follows, Penny Dodds introduces Prouty’s Pre-Therapy Contact Reflections as the framework from which she teaches day care and ward staff how to make contact and emotional connection with people with dementia. Pamela Bruce-Hay has integrated Prouty, Lipinska and Kitwood into her one-to-one counselling. She shows how she succeeds in helping clients with dementia to establish contact with reality, with themselves, and with another. Sally Stapleton has drawn on her training as a Dementia Care Mapper in developing a person-centred approach to neuropsychological assessment. She is also involved in bringing about an organisational and local ‘tide of change’ through developing psychological mindedness based on Kitwood’s principles. In this article, each of the three authors shares a unique experience of trying to step into the world of the person with dementia that they are working with, an experience that they collectively describe as trying to ‘dip our toes in the water’. These are highly personal and person-centred accounts that are nonetheless based on clearly articulated theoretical positions.