Welcome to the dementia interpreters course. Here, you will start to learn the importance of translating the language of dementia. This e-learning course is classified as the community version and will give you the status of being registered Level One Dementia Interpreter. And it's the beginning of your journey to eventually becoming recognised as a Level Five Dementia Interpreter. You will learn the language of dementia as it's one of the most important tools that families, communities and care professionals can learn.
This course is designed to begin giving you the knowledge to reconnect people with dementia to their loved ones or anyone that comes into direct or indirect contact with them. By learning the language of dementia, you will help to reduce social isolation and ensure that we can start to have successful conversations again, with the people that we support. But this course is so much more, and in many ways, unlike any other e-learning courses. Once completed, we stay in contact with you for the next 12 months, completely free of charge. Each month you will receive modules or continual learning about subjects that will improve your communication within a dementia setting. You will also receive the latest research and relevant product information that will help you in all aspects of dementia care.
This platform will continuously develop and adjust to new and exciting research that dementia interpreters will be involved in. And as registered dementia interpreters, you will help shape the future of the dementia landscape. This will be via the dementia interpreters forum, where you will join the global network of dementia interpreters. This means that you will have a unique opportunity to connect with people from around the world to share ideas, real-life experiences, and further your knowledge of communication. Through the dementia interpreters forum, everyone will discuss and analyze how to translate dementia behaviours, actions, noises and situations, to build the content for the world's first dementia dictionary. This freely available dementia dictionary will help professionals, families, organizations and even communities to search for answers on specific issues. Also, the dictionary will offer suggestions and explanations as to why certain behaviours are occurring, as well as solutions to keep people out of care longer. The dementia dictionary will also explain the way a person's brain changes, what certain behaviours mean and how it adapts to form new ways of communicating, all of which can enable care staff and family members to reconnect with them. This will help us form the language of dementia.
Now, there are two versions of the dementia interpreters course, the professional version, and the community version. Firstly, the professional version, which uses experiential training to allow participants to walk in the shoes of a person with dementia. During this course, we would use specially designed equipment to strip the delegate of the ability to communicate in the way they currently do. This will then force them to find new ways of communicating, and they will have to adjust as their brain is impaired. Through this, we will start to see the mirror of the actions, behaviours, noises, that we will see from people with dementia that we care for. By experiencing this, it will allow delegates to be able to translate these issues into our language. And by having this understanding, they will be able to form successful conversations. This will improve the overall level of care.
Due to the safety of participants, and because of the Covid-19 pandemic, unfortunately, at present, we are not able to offer this experiential course to communities or individuals. We must have a minimum of three people that are within their own bubble to ensure safety and to make sure the course can be successful, as they will work together to give a better, more rounded experience. Taking this into consideration, we have therefore designed the community version. You are taking this today. The content is exactly the same as the professional course, the main difference being that you will watch rather than participate in the experiential side of the training. However, this means that you will still be able to observe how this impacts on the group and also the individual themselves.
Observing people in this situation is often just as powerful as actually experiencing it for yourself. Covid-19 must not be a barrier to a greater understanding of improving knowledge of people with dementia, and for this reason alone, we believe that this is so important. We believe this will be one of the most valuable e-learning courses you will have taken to date. At the end of the course, you will be able to identify all the different aspects of dementia communication. You will be able to make simple changes to really help people that you support who have dementia, and you will recognize why these changes are so, so important.
We would suggest you have a pen and paper ready, as there will be lots of information and some practical parts to this course.