Welcome to DREAM Coaching: Understanding the role of Dementia Support Coaches and how they can support you

Welcome to Season 2 of Voices in DREAM, where we explore real-life case scenarios involving changing behaviours in people living with dementia. Guided by experienced Dementia Support Coaches, this series offers practical strategies, reassurance, and compassionate support to help care providers navigate the challenges of dementia care with confidence and empathy. 

Together with DREAM Coaches, we unpack behavioural shifts by identifying early signs, exploring practical and person-centred strategies, and sharing tools that promote patience, empathy, and resilience. Our goal is to offer insight and reassurance, supporting you to create moments of comfort, dignity, and connection for people living with dementia even in the face of change.

Welcome to DREAM coaching: Meet the team and learn how they can support you

In this introductory episode, Yashi is joined by Mary-Clare, the Team Leader of the Dementia Support Coaches, to introduce DREAM Coaching. Mary-Clare explains the role of Coaches, the support and services available, and how you can access coaching through the DREAM portal.

Tune in to learn about

·         Who the Dementia Support Coaches are and how they support people living with dementia

·         Mary-Clare’s role in leading and guiding the coaching team

·         Services available through DREAM Coaching

·         How to navigate the DREAM portal and request a coach

·         When coaching support may be helpful

Please note, demand for DREAM coaching is currently high, so there may be a delay between submitting a request and a coach being onsite. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Hello and welcome to Voices in Dream. This podcast is by the Dream Team, a collaboration between the Wiking Dementia Research and Education Center and the Dementia Support Australia. Whether you're a support worker, a nurse, a volunteer, or someone who cares, then you are in the right place. Voices in Dream connects you to a community of HK workers to support you to support people living with dementia. I'm your host Yashi, and in each episode, we share real stories, practical insights, and support for anyone involved in dementia care, especially those in respite settings. So let's learn together one shift at a time. In this series, we explore the lived realities of dementia care with the guidance of experienced dementia coaches. This special series is designed to focus on real life scenarios that caregivers, including those who work in the residential care homes and community sectors, and the family members of those who are living with dementia can use every day. Today I am joined by the leader of the coaching team, Mary Claire. Welcome to the series, Mary Claire. It's lovely to have you here.

SPEAKER_00 1:10

Thank you, Yashin. Good to be here. Good to have you here too.

SPEAKER_01 1:12

Mary Claire, can you just tell me a little bit about yourself, your role in the coaching, and also a little bit about what coaching is?

SPEAKER_00 1:20

Yes, definitely. So my background is an occupational therapist. I've been an occupational therapist for quite a few years now. Um and my speciality has always been in neurology. Um, and that's drawn me to dementia. Had some experience, some family experience with dementia as well, but certainly um I've spent a lot of time in acute care. Uh, and um you can actually see the the problems that you know um happen with care not being appropriately given to people with dementia. So that has really, really drawn me to do things better.

SPEAKER_01 1:48

Can you tell me your role within this um coaching team?

SPEAKER_00 1:51

Sure. So we have coaches that are available to go out and coach. That's all around Australia. That's all around Australia, yeah, nationally, yes, they're all in different states. Um but we're not frightened to travel either. We can do regional areas, remote areas, and we have done some of those in the past too. Um, but my my other role is basically to support the team and um to ensure that they're skilled up. Because we work with DSA, uh we have a very good education sort of perspective that we can actually put forward.

SPEAKER_01 2:27

Just for the listeners who do not know what DSA is, it's a dementia support Australia, is that right? Yeah, that's we do a lot of work with um people living with dementia.

SPEAKER_00 2:35

They do. Um our our role is um behaviour specialists, really, for people in the community as well as people um in residential aged care. Um, but we've been lucky to partner with uh Wiking and with UTAS, and we're specifically working um on that dream project. We have um referrals come in, I would review the referrals, I allocate the referrals out to the various coaches. And often that's not necessarily geographic. It might be also just because of their personality or their specialty in a particular area of dementia or their experience that they've had. It's basically, you know, running the process of um, you know, that the coaches um ensuring their travel's right, you know, improving their travel.

SPEAKER_01 3:11

In terms of the work that you do, you said you travel around a lot, right? So if I, for example, I work in the organization that's quite remote, um, you will be able to send someone to my organization to do the coaching session?

SPEAKER_00 3:24

Most definitely. Um, you know, it it might take us a little while to organize a face-to-face visit. So we can actually start with um online. So we can basically, you know, do Teams or Zoom um meetings with um staff or a care manager or something like that. Um, and we can say, okay, let's start doing that and putting a few concepts out, doing a little bit of online coaching, and then we can actually organize to do that face-to-face.

SPEAKER_01 3:48

How do I get in touch with you?

SPEAKER_00 3:49

So there's a few ways you can actually get in touch. So generally speaking, you can go into the portal for the dream. So dream.utest.edu.au. You can do it that way, and you can just basically put in a a request. And so, you know, you might put in a little bit of an explanation as to what you might need from a coaching perspective. Um, we're very individualized with what we actually do. So if you once, you know, you say your team aren't very good at you know, a particular area of dementia care, such as approach, then you know, we'll we'll talk to you about how we might be able to enhance that.

SPEAKER_01 4:20

How long does it take for me to fill out that whole thing?

SPEAKER_00 4:24

Oh, look, it's really only a few minutes. It doesn't necessarily have to be extensive what you actually put in there. It just directs us because once we have that referral in through the portal, I'll have a coach actually call you again, you know, um, and that might be a care manager for a facility, or it might even be an individual who just basically wants a little bit of um support.

SPEAKER_01 4:41

So if I'm a support worker and if I want quoting, I can get in touch.

SPEAKER_00 4:45

Definitely.

SPEAKER_01 4:45

So it doesn't have to be done by my care manager.

SPEAKER_00 4:48

It doesn't. It doesn't. You can just be anybody.

SPEAKER_01 4:50

That's fantastic.

SPEAKER_00 4:51

Yeah, you can just be anybody who actually thinks that they need a bit of support with regards to what they're doing with someone with her dementia.

SPEAKER_01 4:56

Does it matter how big of a group that I have? So it do you have the numbers limit?

SPEAKER_00 5:01

Basically, what we say is that we will do um, you know, presentations, um, but we want to make it very individualized and we want to make it very um effective for people. So we've got we would have groups um for group education. We'd basically try to keep it at about eight to twelve. We don't like going any further than that, but we don't mind doing a number of sessions. So we'll do a number of sessions over a you know a few days with different groups. And it might be um we'll we're very flexible. You know, we'll do um night shift. So we'll bend we we we don't mind bending over backwards because we know how important this is.

SPEAKER_01 5:31

You are very flexible with the time, location, and what information that you deliver.

SPEAKER_00 5:36

Definitely. Our Bible, so to speak, from an education perspective, is that the modules that um are presented on the the uh the portal as well. Um but you know we we we tend to stay within that that sort of scope, but it certainly is very all-encompassing anyway.

SPEAKER_01 5:52

Can you give us some examples of what kind of things that you discuss, what kind of information that I should be expecting if I want to be involved in a coaching session and if I have no idea what I want the coaching on?

SPEAKER_00 6:03

The coaches have become very, very skilled at being able to um canvas what you might not need or might might like. They talk a lot about, you know, well, give us a scenario where you might be having some difficulties, um, and then we can basically work out from there. So it might be things like um good approach with someone who has dementia, um, you know, teaching skills such as validation. And when I say teaching, we really are coaching, you know, coaching people to to do that validation. Um and so, you know, it's very, very hands-on from that perspective as well. That's why our group's small.

SPEAKER_01 6:32

And I guess you're focusing on problem-solving skills rather than telling people what to do.

SPEAKER_00 6:37

Oh, definitely, definitely. So we we go in with the attitude that the people in a care home or in a service already know what to do, really. You know, it's about bringing out the best in them and the best skills in them. They're the experts. We aren't the experts, they're the experts, and we look want to walk alongside that and actually bring that out of people and make them feel comfortable and confident about what they're doing. Because they do have the skills. It just sometimes just takes someone to slow things down for them, you know, and to think about what they're doing too.

SPEAKER_01 7:05

Yep. Just to wrap up our uh episode today, can you walk us through the process of getting in touch from um logging in to you being in our facility?

SPEAKER_00 7:15

Definitely. So what happens is that um you go into the portal, you put in a request, and then um I then look at the requests, and then I will actually refer those to the various coaches throughout Australia. The coach will actually call um the person uh and that might be for a group or it might be for an individual who's wanting the coaching. And then basically um they and the coaches will make um arrangements with you um with regards to the place, the time, how much, what possible um uh topics you might need, um, and basically they go from there.

SPEAKER_01 7:47

Thank you so much. Um, and work that you guys are doing is amazing. Do you have any take-home messages for the um service providers in terms of educating their staff about dementia?

SPEAKER_00 7:57

Yeah, I think I think it's it's just about you know um finding out as much information as possible, finding out what education is out there, you know, um, and providing um uh this the staff with the opportunity to get together, to learn together. Um, and for uh from a coach perspective, we'll walk right alongside you and help you along the way.

SPEAKER_01 8:15

Yeah, thanks for being here today.

SPEAKER_00 8:16

Thank you, thanks very much.

SPEAKER_01 8:17

And to our listeners, thank you for listening to us today. If you have any questions, just um leave us a message or and an email, and we will definitely address your question. Thanks for listening to Voices In Dream today, connecting you to the community of age care workers to support you to support people living with dementia. If you found this episode helpful, share it with the co-worker or even mention during your handover. Let's keep building a strong connected care team. Follow the Weeking Center on Facebook and LinkedIn for more episodes and free resources. And also to keep learning and growing, check out our free courses like Dream Program, Equip Learning and Understanding and Preventing Dementia. Take care of yourself and those you support. And see you next week on Voices in Dream. Bye.