September 2022 Blog – The Power of Meaningful Engagement
Monday, September 19, 2022
The power of meaningful engagement for our persons living with dementia related neuro-cognitive decline, has long fascinated me!
It’s also the basis of the Botes Analysis of Functional cognition, that allows clinicians to capture barriers to meaningful engagement.
I often get asked what “ meaningful engagement” means.
According to the father of the Model of Human Occupation, Gary Kielhofner, it consists of 3 essential elements:
“Within MOHO, humans are conceptualized as being made up of three interrelated components:
Volition: the motivation for occupation (or engagement)
Habituation the process by which occupation is organized into patterns or routines (our interests/ personal choices)
Performance capacity: the physical and mental abilities that underlie skilled occupational performance. (Our talents/gifts / learned skills)
The Botes Memory Method is a based on a evidenced based clinical assessment tool : The Botes Analysis of Functional Cognition.
This assessment tool helps us identify cognitive barriers that may interfere with our person’s ability to be independent, and age in place. Once our clinicians identify these barriers that our person living with dementia may experience, we assign our person a Memory Bouquet™ level ranging from:
- Lily (Mild Cognitive decline)
- Daisy (Mild Dementia)
- Violet (Moderate Dementia)
- Rose (Severe Dementia)
- Bouquet level (End Stage Dementia)
The Memory Bouquet™ becomes a roadmap for caregivers, loved ones and family members to assist their person in overcoming barriers to joyful connections. It allows all of us to anticipate the needs of our persons living with dementia, and what we need to have in place to help our person stay safe and independent. This encompasses knowledge about where our person is at in their dementia journey, and how that impacts our need to make environmental changes, deliver verbal cues and tactile cues, as well as combining it with demonstrations of a given task.
Meaningful activity engagement is the ultimate goal that our approach to dementia care aims at. We believe that every person (whether they have dementia or not) has the right to joyful and purposeful activity participation with successful outcomes.
🌹 Our persons have an internal drive (even if they cannot verbalize it)
🌼 Our person needs to feel connected to the here and know – a sense of belonging ( even when they are confused)
💐 Our person needs to have valuable personal interactions (even if they don’t remember who you are!)
🌺 Our person needs to feel valuable in their environment ( they still identify with historical roles and abilities even if we do not understand what that is)
The Memory Bouquet(TM) creates an evidence based roadmap to help loved ones, caregivers, and health care providers, connect with our persons and anticipate and overcome barriers to functional engagement, in order to age in place.
We can change the experience of our loved ones living with Dementia one moment at a time, creating joy and connection for all involved.