Meeting individual needs in recreational groupwork for people with dementia

Abstract

In describing the Respite Care Adult Day Care agency in Brunswick, Maine, this paper sheds light on the challenges, successes, and potential for recreational groupwork to improve quality of life and care for people living with dementia. The paper begins with an overview of relevant theories and highlights a controversy surrounding the use of groupwork in dementia care with respect to individual members’ widely diverse levels of needs and functioning. The paper provides an account of Respite Care, its membership, and a particular situation in which a person-centered, empowerment approach transformed one individual’s apathy into engagement with the group. The paper concludes with a discussion of how person-centered recreational groupwork, when done effectively as in the case of Brunswick’s Respite Care agency, benefits not only those individuals marginalized by society’s treatment of dementia, but also our health-care system, communities, and society as a whole.