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Alzheimer's Foundation | 322 Eighth Avenue | 7th Floor | New York | NY | 10001 |
Angelo Sonnesso M.A M.S.
Social Worker III
Thursday, September 29, 2011
Federal Advisory Council Holds First Meeting to Forge National Alzheimer's Plan
Angelo Sonnesso M.A M.S.
Social Worker III
Friday, September 16, 2011
Fw: 1 supper club 9 21 11Press Release
Press Release
9/16/11
Contact: Gail Sonnesso
252.480.3354
You're invited to our First Sup+per Club Meeting
The GEM Center is offering families facing memory loss an evening out with friends.
September 21 is also the date recognizing the global impact of Alzheimer's disease and is World Alzheimer's Day. We will provide information about memory loss services and supports available in Dare County.
We will meet Wednesday September 21, in Kitty Hawk, at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation from 5pm - 8pm. The meetinghouse has an elevator if stairs are a problem.
Rev. Pat Haresch will welcome us as we meet and network with other families.
Marcia Bradley-Marshall, fitness instructor will offer a chair exercise class to help us work up an appetite.
Val and Tom Cummings are cooking an Italian dinner for us, complete with dessert
The evening will conclude with variety of songs including, "You are the wind beneath my wings", performed by Angelo on the piano.
Families and individuals with memory loss are invited to come and enjoy fellowship and great food with friends both old and new.
The cost is $15 per family of two. If this is a hardship scholarships are available please call Gail for more information.
For more information or to register please call Gail Sonnesso, executive director at 252.480.3354.
Thursday, September 8, 2011
GEM's Caring Effectively Class has been approved for 12.0 CEU's
September 8, 2011
Hello,
I am writing to let you know that our Caring Effectively Class has been approved for 12.0 CEU's and The Adult Care Licensure Section confirms that this course is approved to meet continuing education requirements for assisted living facilities.
Effective care begins with the ability to recognize the different stages of dementia and this class is offered in 6 sessions each class outlining one stage of memory loss. The Course is currently available at the Cooperative Extension Center in Currituck from 11:30 – 1:30 on Tuesdays. The Course will also be offered at COA in Manteo beginning on Wednesday September 14th from 6-8pm.
It's not too late to register as there will be a make-up class on 10/18.
Gail Sonnesso will also outline and give concrete examples of:
Non-pharmacological therapies for people with dementia
"These are wide ranging in approach and encompass psychological, psychosocial, interpersonal, behavioral, emotional, exercise and environmental interventions.
They reflect a variety of approaches, and the creativity and commitment of many professional, and lay carers of persons with dementia around the world."[1]
Learning these therapies (NPT's) will enable your staff to provide more effective care while lessening the agitation and frustration of your residents.
My best,
Gail Sonnesso, MS, QDCP
Vision: GEM will provide effective care for people with early memory loss with training, education, and tangible support. We will offer on-going support to family caregivers, their loved ones with early memory loss and people with early memory loss living independently. We will accomplish this with our Sup+per Club model.
[1] NICE-SCIE Guideline on the management of dementia: http://egap.evidence.nhs.uk/CG42/guidance
Sunday, September 4, 2011
Music may strike a chord with Alzheimer's
| | Music may strike a chord for people Experts say that music can be a useful tool in helping people with Alzheimer's and other forms of dementia. For someone with the disease, spending time with music they recognize often provides a therapeutic sense a familiarity in a world they find confusing. Music speaks to an individual's feelings, so there's no pressure to understand it — they can just experience it. |
How Music Can Help Alzheimer's
Posted: 8/18/11 08:37 AM ET
Celia shares a picture of herself as a 7-year-old girl. Her young mother is leading her in a dance. Then she pulls out a second photograph, taken one week before her mother passed away from Alzheimer's at the age of 78. In this image, they are dancing again. This time, Celia is leading.
"As soon as I felt her lose herself to Alzheimer's, I would bring in my iTunes and play Spanish music for her," said Mrs. Pomerantz. "Then I could convince her to do anything -- we would dance over to the shower or out to get a meal."
Mrs. Pomerantz intuitively found what experts say is useful tool in helping people with Alzheimer's disease and other forms of dementia.
"Music speaks to a person's feelings, so it is a sensory and not intellectual experience," said Martha Tierney of the Alzheimer's Association. "That is partly why it works -- there is no pressure to understand it and they can just experience it."
Tapping into her mother's lifelong love of salsa music by world-renowned musicians such as Tito Puente, Celia Cruz and Pancho Sanchez, from her native Puerto Rico, Mrs. Pomerantz found a way to interact with her mother even after her mother lost her ability to talk.
"When my mother would hear music, she would give life to the music," she said, adding that her mother became known as the "dancing queen" at her final nursing home. "It brought her back to happy moments of maybe dancing with her own mother, or even her grandmother. It gave her a confidence, peace and serenity." Mrs. Pomerantz chronicled her mother's Alzheimer's in a Kindle book, "Alzheimer's: A Mother Daughter Journey."
While not everyone can rely on a history of family dancing and cultural music, it is important to find out what type of music your loved likes and keep playing it for them.
"I had a client who attacked his wife while they were driving," said Nataly Rubenstein of Alzheimer's Care Consultants in Miami Beach, Florida, explaining that the patient's dementia led him to feel agitated in a car. "It turns out his favorite music was the Bee Gees, and now he sits in the car holding the CD case while listening that music."
After her own mother was diagnosed with Pick's Disease (a form of dementia), Ms. Rubenstein was her primary caregiver for 16 years. She recalled that one day when her mother was in a particularly "nasty" mood, the sound of Tom Jones' "What's Up Pussycat?" on the radio calmed her down.
Despite being an expert in dementia care, Ms. Rubenstein stumbled into this soothing tool to help her mother's combative and belligerent nature, which she said is very pronounced with Tick's disease. However, she cautions caregivers to be extremely sensitive to finding music that their loved one will feel a connection to and not just randomly turn on the radio.
"If it wasn't familiar music to them, then it could aggravate them," she said. (She added half-jokingly: "If I ever get dementia, please dear God, I hope my caregivers don't play rap!")
Alzheimer's robs people of their short-term memory, explained Ms. Tierney, but their long-term memory can remain largely intact. "They maintain vivid memories of the past," she said. "A woman may look at her elderly husband and not recognize him as her husband because he does not look 35 years old anymore. So if you were to play music from that time period it would speak to her current reality."
In addition to finding the right music to soothe a loved one with Alzheimer's, a caregiver needs to also be aware of minimizing other sensory stimulation. "A radio can be too distracting with ads," Ms. Tierney said. "And headphones may work for some, but not others. There should not be a TV on in the same room, or other distracting noise."
That said, many people have found that live music can be particularly welcome for many Alzheimer's patients. This can be in the form of someone singing old camp songs, Christmas carols, church hymns, small symphonies and more.
Find out more about how therapeutic music can be for loved ones with Alzheimer's and other illnesses at the American Music Therapy Association's website, www.musictherapy.org.
"A person with Alzheimer's feels like everything is unfamiliar all of the time," Ms. Tierney said. "Allowing them to spend time with music that they recognize and retain memories of gives them the sense of familiarity in a world that is otherwise extremely confusing."
Saturday, September 3, 2011
FW: We the People Have the Right to Petition The White House
Feed: Fred's Head from APH
Posted on: Thursday, September 01, 2011 11:44 AM
Author: noreply@blogger.com (Michael McCarty)
Subject: We the People Have the Right to Petition The White House
| The White House has announced We the People, an online engagement feature. On this innovative WhiteHouse.gov platform, individuals will be able to create and sign petitions seeking action from the federal government on a range of issues. If a petition gathers enough signatures, White House staff will review it, ensure it is sent to the appropriate policy experts, and issue an official response. Visitors to WhiteHouse.gov can begin submitting petitions later this month. To sign up for an alert when it launches and preview the feature, visit http://www.WhiteHouse.gov/WeThePeople. "When I ran for this office, I pledged to make government more open and accountable to its citizens. That's what the new We the People feature on WhiteHouse.gov is all about – giving Americans a direct line to the White House on the issues and concerns that matter most to them," said President Obama. To create and build support for a petition, WhiteHouse.gov visitors will simply need to create an account and gather signatures by reaching out to friends, family and coworkers. If a petition reaches a certain threshold, the initial level will be 5,000 signatures within 30 days, it will be sent to the appropriate policy makers throughout the Administration, reviewed, and an official response will be published to WhiteHouse.gov and emailed to all signers of the petition. |
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