Our latest training workshops bring creative ways to tackle the challenge of helping older people keep hydrated.
Following a success pilot with Northumbria University in 2017, we're providing free hydration training to care settings across Tyneside.
Focusing on people’s individual tastes and needs, the artist-led workshops look at creative ways to encourage hydration.
Douglas Hunter, our chief executive, said: “Often people living in care need extra support and encouragement to drink adequate fluids. This can be difficult to achieve with residents who may have complex needs or be refusing or forgetting to drink or struggling with a reduced appetite and taste.
“Our Imagining Drinks training looks at creative ways to encourage people living with dementia to drink. It considers a person’s likes and dislikes, enabling choices and tailoring drinks to changing moods and tastes while providing care staff with an opportunity to share their ideas.”
The health impact of becoming dehydrated can include increased disorientation, low mood, lack of energy, frailty, poor mobility, headaches, visual and cognitive impairment and difficulty swallowing.
The free workshops have been made possible with £5,000 funding from the P & G Fund at the Tyne and Wear Community Foundation.
Among the first to benefit from the sessions were staff at Charlton Court and St Peter’s Court in Wallsend.
Lisa Brown, activities coordinator at one of the Akari Care-run venues, said: “It was really interesting working with the artists, and I found it great to be able to get some new ideas as well as sharing what we currently do here. Just this month I created a travelling Christmas trolley, getting residents involved in making slow cooker hot chocolate!”
In the New Year the workshops will be rolled out to Balmoral Court and Comfort House in Newcastle and Hadrian House and Hawksbury House in Gateshead.
For more information about using creative techniques to help communication contact us on information@equalarts.org.uk