Get Booked – Human Need & Relationships In Dementia Care

Hello, I'm Hazel and this is Get Booked here at Women's Radio Station supporting women's well-being. Get Booked is all about the books I've loved reading, chatting to authors, publishers, book enthusiasts, bloggers as well, um, all with a view to help and support men and women with just supporting their emotional well-being.. We discuss books of all different varieties, and today I have in the studio Dr. Esther Ramsey-Jones discussing Holding Time: Human Need and Relationships in Dementia Care. Hi! Hello! How are you? Very well. I wanted to make sure I got the title completely right. Yeah, the title and subtitle, it is a mouthful. It is, yeah. I've read this book, we actually, I read this book a month or two ago, so I've kind of refreshed my memory. It's quite a unique kind of book discussing dementia, isn't it? It's kind of the experience of dementia. Yeah, the idea of the book really was twofold. Part of it is to sort of frame it in psychodynamic thinking, so looking at really the emotional underpinnings of the experience of dementia and people that are looking after, professional carers that are looking after people with dementia, but also to step into two very different care homes and sort of, you know, walk in the footsteps of two people with dementia and see what their experience is like on a day-to-day basis living with dementia in care homes, you know, what that kind of collective experience is. Like with other residents? What are the transitions into care homes like? What's it like to go out on a trip and then come back and maybe find yourself in a bewildering place? So that's really the idea of it. And you've kind of— it's interesting because it's not like a manual. It is the stories, they're case studies, and it's just kind of involving yourself It's by involving yourself in the life. Yeah. And what's going on and kind of dissecting it a little bit and the power struggles. I mean, some of it I was like, I'd never even thought of that, but wow, it's kind of sad, but at the same time, important. Yeah, so in order to write it, I spent several months in different care homes and really part of it was, you know, twofold. Again, it was interviewing many people that worked and lived there, but I was also sitting I was sitting there as an observer, which I have to say was really quite tricky at times because I wanted to get out of my chair, and my background was actually in frontline care, and get out of my chair and actually do some of the caring at times, you know, when I saw someone, you know, maybe not be responded to, or it looked as though someone might be being ignored. I mean, that said, there was also very beautiful, tender moments of care, but really I was concentrating on, you know, what we in psychotherapy would look at, call the micro-interactions between people, you know, those tiny, tiny little moments of eye contact, of touch, of the way in which someone puts a jumper over another person to help them get dressed and to see what was going on, what were their sort of emotional affective, if you like, flows, conscious and unconscious between people, what was going on between people, So that's really what I was trying to get to and to see if, you know, relationships could support someone with dementia from feeling less anxious. Well, I found, especially with the way that you kind of put across just some of the, as you say, the interactions, so endearing. What some of them were, maybe I'm quite tired, but I was getting quite emotional and I was just like, it's not him, it's not the number 2 carer that knows what she needs, it's the other one, and it just takes 2 seconds. Yes. But, and also there's just this confusion, and it's just the simple dialogue that goes on in these places. But what we think is quite simple and irrelevant, you kind of brought it home that it's sometimes it's the more simple dialogues that actually are going to form how that day works out for that person. Yeah, I think it, you know, sometimes it's a, it's a strange thing. I think those of us that work in, in sort of different forms of care, whether it's social care, palliative care, wherever it is, we talk about care not really being rocket science. You know, we sort of know, we know deep down what it feels like to be cared for and what it's like to care for someone. I mean, any of us who are parents, you know, or have had a newborn baby in our arms, you know, when they're crying, most of us instinctually, not everyone obviously, but most of us will go to pick up a baby and do something that might be soothing. You know, that's what, what I guess is, that's what care's about. It's about reading the signs, reading the signals, and being as responsive as you can. Now, it's not always easy because lots of us have busy days, you know, tasks to fill, and, you know, being constantly interrupted by the demands of another person can be, be really quite tricky. And I think professional care workers are up against that sort of thing in their daily work too. But it's like you say, if we can slow down time a little bit which is not always possible, granted, but if we can, we might get a little bit of, I don't know, for want of a better expression, reflective headspace to be able to think, well, what is it that the person I'm caring for needs here? Sometimes it can be quite straightforward, you know, it can be playful. You know, there was a lady I spent a lot of time with. I mean, she was an absolutely wonderful woman to spend time with called Daphne, and Well, that's not her real name, obviously I've changed it for the book, but she would walk around the care home, she would use rhyme all the time. So she'd say things like, "Hey ho, the barley mow." That was her way of saying hello to people. And what, I mean, this is so simple. The care workers got to know that this was an expression that gave her joy. So those of them that had twigged this at a deeply intuitive level would repeat it back to her. And you could see that in that moment, human connection was going on. It gave her a sense of, "Oh, I'm somebody here." But this isn't just in care for the elderly or in dementia. No. I wrote a post the other day, it took me about half an hour on the way home from the studio to write it, and it was just about how we cannot slow down and that we need to speculate to accumulate, because if we just spend— there's so many people going, "I don't have time to do mindfulness, I don't have time to just sit there and meditate. I've got, you know, school cakes to make. Yeah. I've got to sort out the football kit. I've got to check in on my elderly mother. I've got to get to work, check my emails, do this, do that, check on Instagram so I'm not missing out on anything, or just whatever. But the thing is, our brains are kind of going bing bing bing bing bing bing bing, and we need to speculate to accumulate, to kind of chill out so that we can kind of go 'Oh, actually, maybe if I just did this, this way, life would be a lot easier.' So we, so we just finding a way to slow down and really appreciate just what's happening. Yeah. Getting grips with things, you know. I mean, it's not straightforward, is it? Because most of us are juggling. We've got families, we've got jobs, you know, we're paying mortgages, we're putting out bins, we're stacking dishwashers, you know. It's, it's a, it's a harassed fast-paced way of living. And, you know, saying, oh, let's do mindfulness meditation, for example, which, which I, you know, there's a lot of evidence that says that this is incredibly good for high levels of depression and anxiety and so forth. But that's tricky, you know, to have to factor it very consciously into your day as a practice, for example. I mean, I sometimes I wonder, I've, I've worked with people where, you know, teams have gone in, people that are living with very high levels of anxiety, and they've just popped Post-it notes around their house, like, check your shoulders are not hunched up and tight. And so, you know, some people might find that an intrusion, but it's a reminder that you're on this sort of autopilot. You know, most of us are on this sort of autopilot. I mean, with me myself, you know, I can sometimes feel myself ramping it up at such high speed, and I I sort of notice this and I sort of consciously end up saying to myself, right, okay, take a breath, slow down, you know, because there's something about living in a very high-speed way where I think you end up missing things. You know, if I take that back to professional care, not only are professional carers, you know, task-focused, you know, they're getting people up, they tend to be, you know, washing people who are increasingly dependent, you know, it can be very, very, or some carers told me it can be very conveyor belt-like. But they're also at the brunt of receiving a lot of what we would call emotional projection. So, you know, the tension that someone with dementia is carrying around with themselves. So it's vital in those kind of fields where the emotional landscape can be quite fraught at times to take time out and just reflect on the work even. The emotional labor of the work. What is it like to be a recipient of constant intense feeling? People underplay that, I think, in social care. Well, can you imagine? I mean, it's so wearing, I guess, on the psyche as well, because there are people say getting frustrated and saying horrific things or just being extremely distraught, and you don't just walk out the door and go, "Ta-da! It's time to watch Coronation Street." No, I don't think you do. I mean, I think those, you know, professional care workers that I've sort of witnessed who are extremely committed to their work, very often they find it very hard to leave a shift. You know, saying goodbye to someone with dementia in a care home, or even those carers that are working in the community, it can be extremely difficult because you know that people with dementia often experience high levels of separation anxiety, for example, so it can be really, really quite tricky. That's one of the main things. I think I discussed this with you when we chatted on another show, and one of the things that I quite often get from my mother is she phones me. She's looking after my 94-year-old grandma who is incredibly bright, but she She has Alzheimer's dementia. She was extremely on the ball up until about 80 when my granddad died, and unfortunately the stress my mum feels when my grandma gets upset because she's leaving. She goes, "Why are you leaving me? I don't know what I'm doing." And she's like, "Yeah, but I've been here for 2, 3 hours. Everything's fine. You've been fed. You can just sit. You can chill, read a book. You do whatever." you know, potter around in the garden, make sure you take your alarm button with you. And she says, it's just, I feel horrible, I just need to speak to somebody about it. So I kind of chat to her. So I try to speak to my mum nearly every day on the way home from work or on the dog walk or something like that, just because she needs to get that out of her system and say, ah. We've just raced through this first section, we're just going to have to go off to some ads. I'll be back in a couple of minutes and we'll talk about this Welcome to Women's Radio Station. I'm Sarah Louise Ryan and welcome to Love Lessons Live on Women's Radio Station. Hello and welcome to Future Classic Women Awards with me, Stefania Passamonte, on Women's Radio Station. Hello and welcome to Julie May Is Listening. Hi, this is Anna Kennedy and we're at Women's Radio Station supporting women's well-being and we're talking all things autism. Women, the possibilities are endless. That's what makes us different. Hi, I'm Lauren Mishkon. I'm a birth doula and mum of 3, and I'm passionate about supporting women to have empowering and positive birth experiences. Please join me for my brand new show, From Tummy to Mummy, here on Women's Radio Station. Every week I'll be here with an expert guest talking about women's reproductive health, everything fertility, pregnancy, birth, and baby related, right through to the menopause and beyond. Please join us for an informative and fun hour. My name is Ingrid Marsh, and I host the Radical Wellbeing Show, supporting women's wellbeing. On my show, I bring you ordinary women like me and you who are sharing their unique stories, women who have refused to be defined by their pains, to be silenced by stigma, or crushed by stereotypes, and who are taking back their power. And together, our mission is a simple one, and that's to inspire you to kick away the roadblocks too, to don your wings and be the person that you were born to be. Hi, I'm Hazel Butterfield, a blogger, book lover, and mental health advocate, and you can listen to my show Get Booked here at Women's Radio Station daily at 5 AM and 5 PM. Throughout my shows, we'll talk about the books I've read, new releases, chat to authors, publishers, and book enthusiasts, all with a theme and aim of supporting women's emotional well-being. If you have a book to tell us about, get in touch at presenters@womensradiostation.com. Join me on my show and share my love of books and writing. Do you want to be a doula? Would you like to support families through pregnancy, birth, and the postnatal period? Do you have qualities of compassion, listening, caring, and empowering? At Nurturing Birth, we offer approved doula training courses across the UK, which are facilitated by an award-winning doula. Here you will learn more about the support you can offer, explore the doula role, and think about how to set up your business. No need for previous qualifications. Find out more at nurturingbirth.co.uk. You're listening to Women's Radio Station, supporting women's well-being. Women's Radio Station's creating a global network for the empowerment of women, and we want you to be involved. Join us on Instagram and Twitter @WomensRadioStation, that's Women's Radio STN, or Facebook Women's Radio Station to keep up to date with all our exciting programs. Welcome back to Get Booked. I'm Hazel Butterfield and I am joined by Dr. Esther Ramsay-Jones, the author of Holding Time: Human Need Bereavement and relationships in dementia care, and we were just talking— it's mouthful, isn't it? We were just talking about separation anxiety. Yeah, I mean, funnily enough, my current sort of working environment is in palliative care, so I work a lot with people that are bereaved, and certainly in that field, a lot has been sort of thinking about bereavement research, a lot is based on the work of a man called John Bowlby who looked at attachment behaviours in small children, and he categorised 4 different types of attachment behaviours. And when somebody dies, and let's say for want of a better argument the spouse remains, it triggers those kind of early attachment patterns very often, the absence of of the dead person. And there's also work in the dementia care field. I think it's Kate White who's recently been writing similarly about attachment behaviors in people with dementia, and Bear Meesen was another one. And they've found that with dementia, attachment behaviors start to get triggered as well. So you might find, I mean, not always, but if you explore people's early childhoods, there might be you know, something in that. So someone that fears being abandoned when they've got dementia, it might be that there was something in their early childhood where they, you know, a parent wasn't around enough, or a parent died in their early childhood, or something like that, which would trigger what we would call an anxious attachment behaviour. You also see other attachment behaviours like ambivalent attachment behaviours, where people sort of veer from being loving, then quite hating, Obviously you've got secure attachments, and I think without a doubt when I worked in the care home context, I did see people that seemed to weather their dementia quite well. They weren't in heightened anxiety, they didn't seem particularly angry and frustrated in it, and you know, I suspect part of that will be down to early childhood experiences one way or another. It's possible anyway. As with anything, I mean, just because Just because somebody is old or has dementia does not mean that they're lovely people. Absolutely not, no. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. Likewise, you know, the nicest people, everybody can change, that's just human nature, but it's interesting, especially if you possibly have to care for your elderly parent who you didn't particularly like throughout your whole life. Oh gosh, yes, I mean that— mind-boggling. The, the sort of, uh, the, the, the dynamics, the power dynamics that might take place between, uh, you know, let's say a daughter and a mother or a son and a mother. I mean, it's sort of like it's a reversed process. So if any— there's been any resentments or, you know, that have been lingering around, they may well play out in that caring dynamic. And, um, you know, we know that there are, um, an awful lot of carers out there who are informal carers. They're taking the brunt of a lot of social care in many ways, and obviously they're not really getting funded for the work they're doing for society. And it's gruelling, it's hard work. You have informal carer burnout. People, you know, can hit rock bottom and get depressed by doing it. And if that's all taking place within fraught sort of relationships, then, um, you know, people do need space to sort of refuel, to go back in and continue to, to do it. Um, we need to look after ourselves, but also there's, there's something like 670,000 informal care workers. Yes, yeah, yeah. I think the recent figure, um, that, that I was exposed to is something like 700,000 in the UK. So it's, it's a large number of people. It really, really is. And, um, you know, keep in mind that that's obviously sometimes there's 2 or 3 siblings looking after— yes, so some— I mean, obviously if it can be distributed, it's going to take, you know, if there's a shared responsibility, it's going to be better for people, you, you might imagine, unless of course there are tricky dynamics between siblings, and then it can cause all sorts of, all sorts of tensions. But, um, you you know, and you can have the good child, the bad child, you know, all sort of vying for some kind of attention. Can I do a quick disclaimer? Because if my mum is listening, in no way am I referencing anything that's happening in our family. Okay. They're all examples, don't worry. Okay. But there, you know, at the same time, I mean, there are some really good organisations out there that are supporting informal carers. So there's an organisation, I think it's relatively new, called Dementia Care Counts. Up in Salford, there's an organization called Empowered Conversations, and they're doing incredible work where they gather carers together and they have these difficult conversations. So carers are able to, I think usually in group settings, to be able to talk through those sort of more shameful feelings, you know, that they're feeling angry with this, you know, apparently vulnerable person with dementia. You know, that's a tricky tension to hold onto, you know, feeling angry towards someone you can see is struggling. And yet that— it's a human response, you know. Well, if you kind of flip the narrative a little bit, keeping in mind that most people are living post-80 a lot more now, so you have quite a lot of carers that have just retired. Yeah. They're in their early 60s, mid-60s, and they're going, "Great, I've got my time back," then all of a sudden they don't. No. And that's interesting because also, you know, people who take retirement in their mid-60s quite often are looking after their children's children. Yes, it's very true. So what's happening in retirement? Where are the golfing holidays? Where are the golfing holidays? Yes. I don't golf, I don't know why I came up with that. Um, but no, I mean, you're right. I mean, grandparents are doing an awful lot, aren't they, for working parents? Um, you know, they're, they're sort of covering a huge childcare burden in the country. Um, equally, I should imagine that Ainge Range are also, as I said, you know, covering a lot of the social care burden, um, with older parents. But I mean, in terms of what, what you're talking about, you know, there you are, you leave work, you've got your savings in a bank account, so on and so forth. You're hoping, I don't know, to go on a cruise or whatever it is you're wanting to do with your time. And you start to, you know, what you're going through in the end is supporting a parent who is changing before your very eyes, you know, who's moving into greater experiences of decline, dependency, really, really difficult situation. So I guess what you're going through is not only a mourning in some ways of your parent that's alive, but you're going through a mourning of what your own future might have looked like, you know, so there's something— Yeah, exactly, so you know, how do we support people that are doing those very vital things? It's a question, isn't it? Well, do you know what, I think in circumstances such as this, sometimes it's an acknowledgement Yeah. Acknowledgement goes a long way. It's like if you do something wrong, somebody says, "Actually, I'm sorry," that's better than them, I don't know, slipping you a chocolate bar or whatever. It's acknowledgement. And so, do you know what? If you're looking, if you're doing the care that possibly the government should be partly or wholly responsible for, give them a tax rebate or something. Something needs to be happening And just if you, for whatever reason, and there are always so many reasons, that possibly you can't put in as much effort as say your sister who lives nearer to your mother, father, whatever, just every now and again just say, "I get it, I appreciate it, I know I can't do as much as you, but I really do appreciate it," or, "Is there something I can do? Can I do the TV? Can I do something remotely? Can I do all like the financial parts, things that I can do online. Just acknowledgement goes a long way. I think you're right, you know. I mean, I was thinking about this recently in terms of people who are, you know, have long-term conditions or who are, you know, who are dying, and thinking about, well, what is it to, you know, in palliative care we talk a lot about what is a good death, what does it look like. And, you know, death can be extremely painful, it can be messy, so on and so forth. But if you're to think about, I think what most people might say, if I was dying well, it would be that they were still seen as a human being, heard as a human being, touched as a human being, right till the very end. And that starts right from the beginning of time too. You know, a baby that's ignored and whose cries are not heard is a baby that is is not being validated. And it's like you say, we all need that kind of acknowledgement. You know, when we're struggling with someone, something, that's what most of us are looking for. You know, somebody not to fix it. Yeah. You know, but simply say, "I can see that you're struggling." And you know, that's the bit, isn't it? But it's something we often find hard to do because when we're faced with someone that's struggling, most of us feel somehow that we're ill-equipped with that kind of emotional language Or we might feel criticized by it somehow, so we get on the defensive. So how, you know, these, it's, but it's someone with dementia, you know, again, you know, they might be, they're crying out or, you know, in the care home that I visited, there was a lady who would literally shout out, "Can you see me? Can you see me? Can you hear me? Can you hear me?" I mean, that's the bit. Most of us want to be seen or heard, acknowledged, as you say, I mean, It's one of the big things I kind of teach to my kids. I'm like, if you've done something wrong, don't— you're just gonna annoy people and upset people if you try and blame somebody else or come up with an excuse. If you've done something wrong, possibly go off into your room, have a think about it, let things calm down. Yeah. And just say, I'm really sorry actually that I did that. Yeah. And most of the time they don't even get in trouble. I'm like, if you learn— unless it's really bad. Yeah. I'm like, you know, we have tantrums. I say, I say stupid things to my kids sometimes when I'm knackered, but then I get, I'm really sorry, I'm tired, I'm just maybe just I'm going to go sit in my room for a little bit. And they're like, you're okay, should we bring you a hot water bottle, whatever. And it's just acknowledgement. It is. And you know what you're describing in some ways is that sort of the, you know, because human beings, you know, there are conflicts ensue, there's tension between us, you know, we're all muddling along, aren't we? We're all trying to tolerate each other and our differences is there's something in what you're saying which is about rupture and repair. I think, you know, sometimes it's almost important that you have a moment of conflict or tension, but it's, it's whether you can repair it. That's the bit. Exactly. Right, we're just going to pop off. We're halfway through today's show. Goodness. Right, uh, we'll be back shortly. Welcome to the Women's Radio Station, supporting women's well-being. Women's Radio Station is all about diversity, from opinions, career, ethnicity, education, and most importantly, women's well-being. We aim to celebrate the individuality of every woman everywhere, providing opportunities and the platform for your voice. Visit our website womensradiostation.com for more information. I'm Tamina Zaman, founder of Empower and Enrich. When it comes to money, do you clam up or get confused? Do you wish you could save more money, or are you hoping you have enough for retirement? You are not alone. Many women want to be smarter with their cash but just don't know where to start. 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For more information on how you can sponsor a show, go to womensradiostation.com. Women's Radio Station, supporting women's well-being. Welcome back to the second Second half of Get Booked here at our fantastic studio in Covent Garden. We are supporting women's well-being and we're doing that via books and blogging and just the love of literature and things. And we discuss a variety of different books throughout the Get Booked shows, and today we've been talking about Holding Time: Human Need and Relationships in Dementia Care. Care. And we've been racing through talking about so many different bits and bobs, haven't we? We are, we're going all over the place, aren't we? Yeah, the thing is you've covered this in quite an interesting way in that you've done case studies at 3 different care homes, you're talking about the concept of mothering, well everything really, dependency and the struggles that people have to go through and kind of your experience of dementia care, but how we can experience it and just understand it a little bit more, because it's a heartbreaking disease. Yeah, it is, and I guess, you know, one of the reasons why the book has sort of, you know, gone back to things like mothering is because I think care is, is very much embedded in the human experience. So caring, you know, we sort of care for people right the way throughout the whole of the life course. And so, um, you know, my background is in, in psychotherapy, psychodynamic psychotherapy, and, and the, the sort of learning does start with, well, what's going on between mothers and, or, you know, fathers and very small babies. And I suppose in that setting, the mother or the father, they are responsive to an absolutely dependent creature, you know, in the first instance. And so what set me off on this track was about looking at the way any of us respond to absolute dependency. And perhaps it's easier to do in a sort of cutesy, with a cutesy newborn, not always granted. And in fact, and any of us that are mothers know that that in itself is very hard work. But I was interested, I think, in what goes on with those who are looking after older people, you know, who are wrinkly, whose bodies are changing, who may not be as cutesy, and what, what, what is our relationship towards dependency when it's seen in older people, particularly those living with dementia? So that's what I was really curious about, that's what set me off on this whole, whole journey. What's important to point out though is that when you're caring for a baby, this is something that you've created, yeah, and you know it's going to get better, you're going to teach them something else, there'll be the next stage and the next stage and it's still like 18 to 30 years of actually probably I'm still a pain in the bum to my mum. Yeah. And I'm mid-30s. But you know that there's crying. Yes. But then in 6 months they're going to learn to start eating and then they're gonna, at 1 year they're gonna start walking and doing this and doing that and it's going to progress, whereas with dementia care it's gonna get worse. Yeah, I mean, I think that's, that's, that's the thing. I mean, Shakespeare talks about that sort of inversion, but, um, you know, as you say, when you're, when you're with a, with a baby, you, you know that— well, hopefully you know that they're going to develop, they're going to be growing into themselves, they're going to be unfolding, they're going to develop new skills. So there's, there's masses of hope in all of that. You know, and in dementia, with dementia, it's the reverse trajectory. So whereas a child is becoming, someone with dementia effectively is unbecoming. And so we might imagine that there's less hope in that, in sort of bearing witness to that and walking the walk alongside someone and supporting them in that journey of, you know, really in some ways it's about disintegration, disintegration of the body, disintegration of the mind. And although that sounds really, really bleak, there are these moments and encounters which are so sort of filled with human tenderness and connection. And I think one of the things that was so striking in doing all of this work and writing the book was how we, you know, you might imagine that there can't be play in that context of dementia care and in care homes, but actually there's masses of it. Yeah, there is. You know, these spontaneous moments where people break out and they sing over the toast in the early morning, or they're, people are rhyming together. I mean, one of the most beautiful things that I used to see was carers and people with dementia just coming together and dancing, you know? And that's that bit without words, you know? It's completely non-verbal, and it's a human connection in a kind of primitive, if you like, embodied way. And I think it just— also, it's about touch. That's about physical touch, and older people very often aren't touched, you know, unless it's a kind of functional touch of, you know, getting someone dressed and so on. So it's that lovely sort of moving way into intimacy, if you like. I used to work with a woman many, many years ago, and I would go into her room and we'd chat about getting dressed and she'd tell me what she wanted to wear, and she'd be choosing like the pink floral shirt with a pink skirt. And I'd be saying, and she— I'd say, wow, we really are, you know, getting dressed today. And she said, well, of course, we're going off to Hammersmith Palais. And, you know, it was these kind of moments. And there I am in a bedroom in a care home, and you just put on the radio, and you— in that moment, you could have a dance with her. And she, she couldn't stand, but it was sort of on the bed, you know, you'd sort of hold her hands and, and you realise it's, you know, those moments really, they're beautiful, you know, it's a, it's a, it's a funny thing. And it's about appreciating it and appreciating, it's not always just a case of, you know, this is how it used to be, I'm mourning the loss of that, yeah, but there's something else you can get, yeah, and it's understanding that and that's That's what Holding Time is trying to create for people. Yeah. To try and help them understand. Now, a rather interesting section that I want to go on to now, if you don't mind, is how you touch on race relations. Oh yeah. I'd not even thought of this as being an element. You wrote about it quite— intricately, quite honestly. Do you want to tell us a little bit about why you decided to write about this? Well, certainly in one of the care homes that I spent a lot of time in, it was clear that the sort of— the mix of races among the staff team were quite different to the resident population, and it wasn't always the case, but there were one or two care workers who had definitely been in receipt of racist abuse. And, you know, we don't know what was going on in those dynamics, but certainly they'd been affected by it, and it had stirred up the care workers' memories of, you know, excluding notices on the doors, for example, in 1960s London. So that— this is— this was the context that they were working in. And very often and, you know, think, you know, those kind of, um, very difficult sort of, um, issues like race and class, they sort of get swept slightly under the carpet in things like dementia care because obviously there's so many other concerns. Now, I mean, it's also possible that there will be, you know, racist difficulties going on between residents and so on and so forth, but I guess what I'm saying is it can be a highly a flammable environment at times. And without thinking about it, without having a kind of reflective space to really be able to think about it honestly, like, how does that hurt me when someone says that to me? And so on and so forth. It sort of gets swallowed down. You know, so again, we're back to that whole thing of people's experiences having to be acknowledged in the work. And I guess there's something about people living with dementia, they often return to past lives. But I think what was, you know, so striking about those interviews with the particular members of staff is that those moments where they'd been, you know, called really horrible names, that had taken them right back to their own pasts and that sort of deep wounding rejection. That's got to mess with your psyche, especially when you're their primary carer. Yeah, absolutely. And you know, what was extraordinary about that is that, um, I remember one worker particularly being faced with that quite regularly. She had this amazing capacity not only to empathize with the woman that was, you know, abuse— abusing her, verbally abusing her, and try to understand what was going on. And she, she made this extreme, extremely sort of insightful quote about, 'We all have ghosts in our cupboards.' So she was imagining that in fact the person with dementia may have been in receipt of abuse herself. So that was an extraordinary sort of empathetic leap that she did. But also the way that then she felt that she would need to speak to other members of staff to get a different care worker to go in because she could see that her very presence, even though she was there to help, was perplexing the resident. So that takes a lot of sort of psychological understanding actually. There was another particular incident in there as well where you said that the care worker had to consciously go, am I still accepting and understanding that this person isn't necessarily meaning what they're saying or doing, and can I offer the best care if it gets to a stage where I'm actually— I've gone over a particular boundary and I'm actually now quite hurt by the whole thing. And then she was questioning— I can't remember if it was he or she— questioning whether she could provide the best care after— if you are constantly abused that's going to change the way you feel about that person. And it was a conscious decision and every day they had to assess it. Yeah, yeah, every— you know, and all— but, but also, I mean, I think the other thing is, is, is about those moments where while you're doing the care work, you're also thinking that you're, you're actually working in a sort of inhumane place. And, um, I think on lots of levels, organizations, any queer organizations where there is a real sort of mix of ethnicity, there is a real responsibility at times to give people the space to think about that. You know, what are these tensions that are going on? You know, how do you keep working in the face of, of, of abuse? What can be tolerated? What can't? That all has to be thought about, and it has to be addressed. And again, yeah, when we went back to to just acknowledging, yeah, what's happening. Um, we are just going to go over to our last set of adverts and then we'll be here with our final section. Okey-dokey. Welcome to Women's Radio Station. I'm Sarah Louise Ryan and welcome to Love Lessons Live on Women's Radio Station. Hello and welcome to Future Classic Women Awards with me, Stefania Passamonte, on Women's Radio Station. Hello and welcome to Julie May Is Listening. Hi, this is Kennedy, and we're at Women's Radio Station supporting women's well-being, and we're talking all things autism. Women, the possibilities are endless. That's what makes us different. Hi, I'm Lauren Mishkon. I'm a birth doula and mum of 3, and I'm passionate about supporting women to have empowering and positive birth experiences. Please join me for my brand new show, From Tummy to Mummy, here on Women's Radio Station. 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Throughout my shows, we'll talk about the books I've read, new releases, chat to authors, publishers, and book enthusiasts, all with the theme and aim of supporting women's emotional well-being. If you have a book to tell us about, get in touch at presenters@womensradiostation.com. Join me on my show and share my love of books and writing. Do you want to be a doula? Would you like to support families through pregnancy, birth, and the postnatal period? Do you have qualities of compassion, listening, caring, and empowering? At Nurturing Birth, we offer approved doula training courses across the UK which are facilitated by an award-winning doula. Here you will learn more about the support you can offer, explore the doula role, and think about how to set up your business. No need for previous qualifications. Find out more at nurturingbirth.co.uk. You're listening to women's radio station supporting women's well-being. Women's Radio Station's creating a global network for the empowerment of women, and we want you to be involved. Join us on Instagram and Twitter at Women's Radio Station, that's Women's Radio STN, or Facebook Women's Radio Station to keep up to date with all our exciting programs. Welcome back to Welcome to today's Get Booked. This is the final section we've been racing through. I'm joined in the studio with Dr. Esther Ramsey-Jones. We've been chatting away, haven't we? We have, we've been doing very well. I kind of feel like the bits that we talked about off-air should be a different show. Probably. It's— do you know what? There was this article that I picked up the other day and I kept on meaning to just in the breaks to kind of remind myself what I wanted to come up with, and now I'm looking at it. Around two-thirds— there we go, I found the bit I wanted to bring up— around two-thirds of the 850,000 people living with dementia in the UK are female. Gosh, I don't think I'd heard that statistic. Well, I got the book from you two or three months ago, and I I, that's when I first started reading the book, when we had our first chat. This was in the Boots Health and Beauty. Ah, so this was only a month ago. So two-thirds of the 850,000 people living with dementia are women. Yeah. So I wonder if that's anything to do with longevity generally. Probably. Although I think, you know, because we're not an industrialised nation anymore, that's, that's beginning to shift and men are also living a lot longer. But it's, it's an interesting finding, isn't it? I don't know what's underpinning all of that. It's maybe they're more vocal and so it's more detected. No, I don't know. I have no idea. No, it is very— I mean, certainly anecdotally, my experience is that there were always more women living in care homes than men. They were, you know, fewer and far between. I wonder if it's, you know, whether women are living on their own more often, you know, because they live longer, so they've been bereaved and that might— you see, when you've got a spouse that's looking after you, I think that shields society's sort of gaze on you as to whether you're all right or not. It's very— Yeah, I do think that quite often people will kind of suffer in silence. Yeah. Just get on with it, kind of stiff up a lip. But especially in the case of my grandma, I mean, she did— she was very busy. Yeah. And it was within months of my granddad dying that her first signs of Alzheimer's and dementia came through. And it's to do with having a You know, if you're not using your brain, then sometimes these things can creep in a little bit quicker. Yes. And so that might be one of the cause and effect kind of— I mean, we— I think it's often the case when somebody has, you know, lost a partner that it becomes a little bit more obvious that someone might be struggling, certainly with early-stage memory problems. I'd say, um, and extra support is needed. Bereavement itself is, uh, an extremely— or grief rather— is an extremely difficult process to go through. Um, and I mean, there is a chapter in the book about the way that certainly death is conceptualized, but I mean, grief itself, um, you know, people can experience oral and visual hallucinations. It's extremely difficult to concentrate, you know, you're entire set of certainties for many people are upended. So it's, it's sort of inevitable that someone might appear to be struggling more, more and more. And where, you know, I'm not saying that, you know, grief is dementia, but it might be that in the mix of all of that, early signs of dementia start, you know, that were there but were shielded by the partner, start to become more more obvious. Well, there are a lot of things actually that can be quite confusing in terms of diagnosing dementia because not only, you know, bereavement, tiredness, and it's again, it's to do with the brain. Yeah. But I was previously speaking to Deborah Stone about her book on caring for older people and how sometimes the effects of UTIs— Oh gosh, yes, which I think sort of tends to go into the sort of more delirium sort of angle. But yes, it can be confused with dementia. Depression can be confused with dementia. So, you know, getting a clear diagnosis can, you know, at times be quite difficult because there'll be other variables. I mean, the other thing is, as you say, you know, when people are extremely lonely and socially isolated, the absence of stimuli, you know, stimulation, you know, it must— you wonder it will have an effect of some degree or another. I mean, I don't— there's no causal reality that that would cause dementia, but certainly it's the case that maybe without stimulation, you know, you're less likely to be in touch with what's going on around you and so on and so forth. So there are just so many things that impact the experience of older age, I think. Could that be one of— going back to when we were saying about that, you know, 2/3 of people diagnosed with dementia are women, that maybe men, as they get older, they tend to retreat a bit more, so it's harder to diagnose. That's a very interesting point, isn't it? Maybe what you've sort of picked up on there is that maybe there's something gendered in the, you know, in terms of how able we are as women or as men to ask for help. What does it mean to express in an indirect way that, hey, hang on a minute, look, I'm struggling, I'm vulnerable, I need some kind of help. And maybe, maybe that's it. Maybe, you know, I don't know for sure, but maybe men sort of, sort of hold on, bottle things up an awful lot more. I mean, I think it was International Men's Day yesterday, Yesterday, wasn't it? And I think, you know, things like suicide statistics and so forth would bear that out, that men tend to carry the burden of emotions, you know, in a much more tightly controlled way until the point at which it gets too much. Which is why we do have— we've got our women's radio station, we have men's radio station. It's not that we're separating men. No, it's just we both sometimes we need to address that we need to deal with things slightly differently. Yeah. Men can listen to women's, women's can listen to men's, but also it's just about making sure there's just a little bit of something for everybody. Yep. And when we need to, you know, women function— do function differently to men, and so, you know, we just need to address the differences. They're not bad differences, they're just differences. No, I mean, I guess culturally it's been legitimised, hasn't it, for women to be able to talk about feelings. I mean, but I mean, that's broad brushstroke stuff because we also know, and certainly in counseling services, we know that there are many, many women who would, you know, who would rather shy away from talking about how they feel. So they get on with things pragmatically and repress their feelings, which may later come back to bite them. So it's not sort of cut black and white, if you like, between men and women. There are overlaps. Of course there are, but maybe as a sort of broad generalisation, women are slightly more comfortable, let's say, with talking about how they're feeling. Yeah, or more creative with coming up with arenas to talk about it. Yes. Book club. Who even takes a book to book club? I know. We're walking the dog, man. We're having a chat and a power walk. Yes, yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Why do women always sort out the PTA at school? Which, trust me, I know that's not completely accurate, but because they're sitting in a pub discussing it. Men, come on, wise up! Yeah. We're just trying to find different ways and excuses to just chat and air things. I just want to go back to something that you were talking about in terms of death and bereavement. You do actually lecture at the Open University. I do! Yeah, wow! Do you get a lot of sign-ups to death, dying, and bereavement classes? I think, you know, actually it's, I mean, it's, I mean, that's just a huge area of interest, I think. It's, I mean, there's an academic called Clark who, he said historically we in the West, we were living in sort of death denial times. I mean, he's now beginning to suggest that we're moving into a death revival time. You know, there are death cafes now. There's the idea of green funerals. So people are talking about dying. Dying matters. In fact, there's a charity called Dying Matters. And I guess it's because, you know, again, it's this whole thing of what do we all feel able to talk about? What are we avoiding? Death has historically, in the West at least, perhaps been a taboo subject. You know, let's sort of— it's too tricky to talk about because you know, we'll all sort of get anxious and panic about it. What we know in palliative care is that actually very often if that's talked about, certainly a dying person will feel less isolated in their own anxiety. So, you know, it's becoming more widespread to talk about these things. There's an awful lot of work to be done still. Yeah. I googled it. As you were saying that, deathcafe.com, find a death cafe, wow, okay, yeah, interesting, um, yeah, wow, they're all over the place, that's, I didn't know that, I'm gonna have a look at that properly. Yeah, I think it's surprising actually, you know, I've got myself onto social media and I, I, I see all of these things streaming through Um, I mean, it's good. I mean, the more resources there are out there, then, then the better it is for people. It's just, well, there is some— there's something about talking. I, I mean, and I would say this as a psychotherapist, that tends to take the power out of things. So, you know, what type of your head— getting them out of your head. How do we share that? There's a psychologist in the States, Brené Brené Brown, and she talks about honest vulnerability. Now, that's not about talking, talking so much that you fall apart. It's, it's literally about sharing those, those things that you feel a little bit vulnerable about. It doesn't necessarily weaken you to talk, I'd say. And I think in, in terms of, um, just talking about vulnerability, um, we've come to the end of today's show, but I just want to end perfectly— you perfectly summed up the end of this book with, in terms of people with dementia hating dependency. We also shame our infantile dependent self and shame ourselves as we age and move towards death. This is quite simply no way to go. You're just trying to make sure that people go in the nicest way and most understood way possible. Yeah. I think that's fantastic. It's all about understanding. It's something like that. Exactly. I will make sure that All these details go up on the Women's Radio Station website resources page. I keep on saying resources and it's my kids, they made me do it. It's resources. Where else can people find out about your book? We've got 10 seconds. Oh my goodness, I think it's in most bookshops, it's on Amazon, you know, the usual thing. Brilliant, make sure, and what I'll do is I'll make sure it's up on my social media as well. Lovely. Bratty, bratty. Um, thank you so much for joining us. Oh, not at all, it's been delightful. Welcome to the Women's Radio Station, supporting women's well-being. Women's Radio Station is all about diversity, from opinions, career, ethnicity, education, and most importantly, women's well-being. We aim to celebrate the individuality of every woman everywhere, providing opportunities and the platform for your voice. Visit our website womensradiostation.com for more information. I'm Tamina Zaman, founder of Empower and Enrich. When it comes to money, do you clam up or get confused? Do you wish you could save more money, or are you hoping you have enough for retirement? You are not alone. Many women want to be smarter with their cash but just don't know where to start. At empowerandenrich.org, you will find a host of options to help you take charge of your finances and learn how to put your money to work for you in an easy, affordable way. Get in touch with me at empowerandenrich.org and let's change your future together. Do you want to be a doula? Would you like to support families through pregnancy, birth, and the postnatal period? Do you have qualities of compassion, listening, caring, and empowering? At Nurturing Birth, we offer approved doula training courses across the UK which are facilitated by an award-winning doula. Here you will learn more about the support you can offer, explore the doula role, and think about how to set up your business. No need for previous qualifications. Find out more at nurturingbirth.co.uk. Hi, I'm Carolyn Van Beers. Please join me for a brand new show here on Women's Radio Station. It's Mother's Hour. If like me, you're a mum juggling far too many balls and dropping most of them, this is definitely the show for you. We'll examine the highs and lows of motherhood and make sure you laugh out loud as we take on this challenging role together. With spoonfuls of advice, incredible stories, it will be a refreshing, honest, and funny look at being a mum. Are you struggling with money? Turn to us as a national charity helping people struggling to make ends meet. Job loss, illness, or bereavement can cause a real financial crisis. We give practical help to get people back on track. Whether you're thinking of having a baby—