Caregiving and dementia/Projects/Clinical Workshops – Environmental Design

Overview
This project involved the provision of workshops and/or guest lectures on environmental design for people with dementia. The workshops aimed to enable staff from the acute care, aged care and community care settings to evaluate their environments, identify areas for improvement and devise practical plans for achieving that improvement.

This project aimed to develop the skills of health professionals to improve the level of dementia care provided throughout the acute, community and residential care settings.

This project:
 * 1) Provided workshops to staff from the acute care, aged care and community care settings aimed at educating them to evaluate their environments, identify areas for improvement and devise practical plans for achieving that improvement.
 * 2) Delivered these workshops in collaboration with staff from other DTSCs and evaluated the feasibility of establishing a network of leaders able to provide workshops around Australia

These workshops introduced designing for people with dementia to a broad audience and promoted the use of the educational package developed under the [[Caregiving and dementia/Projects/Environmental design audit tool|Environmental design audit tool] project..

While the consultancy and education service described in the Dementia education for aged care managers and architects project will be practically useful to those currently engaged in developing their environments, there are many aged and health care providers who require an introduction that will enable them to see the benefits of using the environment as an active partner in the care of people with dementia. Discussions with other DTSCs, particularly QLD, have reinforced the experience of the NSW/ACT DTSC that there is a high level of demand for education in this area.

This project will lay a foundation for the more specialised services developed in the Environmental design audit tool] and [[Caregiving and dementia/Projects/Dementia education for aged care managers and architects|Dementia education for aged care managers and architects projects by explaining the benefits of a well designed environment and promoting the availability of services that can help at exactly the right time in the design process.

More information

 * TBA