EQ and its crucial role in understanding a dementia - Professor David Sheard

"The recipe for disaster is having no comfort, no belonging, no security, no identity, no meaning."

My guest this week shares an insight that we all can benefit from harnessing: Identity, purpose, and meaning are central to wellbeing at every stage of life, not just in dementia care.

Professor David Sheard is one of the UK’s most influential voices in dementia care reform.

What begins as a discussion about dementia care soon becomes something far more personal: a conversation about identity, vulnerability, coming out as a gay man in the 1970s, living with terminal heart failure, and what it means to leave a legacy.

Emotional Intelligence plays a key theme in David’s life and advocacy for more understanding care.

This episode invites us all to remember that all human beings are more feeling beings, than thinking beings, and that emotional intelligence can be the key to helping us connect with each other better.

Music: 'Spirit of Fire' - fiftysounds.com

Share your reactions, questions, the insights you get from our episodes.

Don't forget to follow us on Become Unmuted on Instagram and Facebook for even more from Unmuted.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

I suppose for 14-15 years I tried to believe as a social worker and then as a healthcare manager that you could change dementia care from within. But my conclusion at 35 was that it was all about processing people in dehumanised settings that were nothing like anything I'd ever lived in. And then where you saw people naked, screaming, help me, help me, help me, calling out for their mother. I think what I think everyone has had a moment of vulnerability in their life. Be it divorce, be it child death, be it an addiction, uh, be it grief, whatever it is, and we make our own personal choice whether we're going to bury that, put it to the side, try and get through it, or whether we incorporate it in the totality of the outer part of who we are. I know the title of the book, uh, as does my partner Peter and one or two close friends, and the title is already Never Quite. And the people who know that title were shocked. I thought I was done. I thought I'd done what everyone said. You've got to stop at 60, David. You've got to call it a day in cardiologist words where this is a recipe for disaster, etc. etc. etc. No, that I what I discovered in life is the same as I discovered years ago in dementia care. The recipe for disaster is having no comfort, no belonging, no security, no identity, no meaning. That's the recipe for disaster. And I said for years and years and years, people living with dementia are more feeling beings than thinking beings. That when you can't rely on facts, logic, reason, memory with dementia, you rely on this. And living with dementia, you become heightened as a feeling being to other people who are or aren't, and they can spot you a mile off. And I think in the world of AI that's coming and the care sector in the next 20-30 years is to say actually that's the same rallying cry to everyone in the health and social care sector. We're all more feeling beings than thinking beings.

SPEAKER_02 2:41

Professor David Sheard, it's so good to see you, David. And as you can probably tell from my copious amounts of notes, that when I started to plan this interview, it was going to go one way, and it was all around the world of dementia. And then we got chatting before the cameras got rolling, and I thought this might go in a completely different direction, but we'll see where it goes. It certainly won't be linear, that's for certain. So, David, tell me uh tell me a little bit about your for uh background for people who aren't aware of your work, and I mean that with the utmost respect. Just tell us a little bit about yourself.

SPEAKER_01 3:16

Uh originally a social worker uh 45 years ago, uh, began working with people dementia in hospitals. Uh a time when people didn't really know what dementia was, or really understood what my job was. Uh, 15 years on through health social services, my last job there was as a general manager for psychiatry. Uh, and then people in the sector know I left at 35 with the famous words I'm out of it, and what run factories in dementia care. And then I set up as a single freelancer and created Dementia Care Matters, which became an international organization in five countries. And then at 60 I left to retire, uh, and that was uh pretty much a disaster because what I learnt from that was the loss of purpose, loss of your spirit inside. Uh, and much to everyone's surprise, I returned with a uh a first-time hat in academia when I was offered a professorship at York St. John University.

SPEAKER_02 4:28

I want to go back to that time um when I think you said you were 35 and you went home, went, that's it. And you used the term factory, which I thought was a really interesting term. What triggered that, David?

SPEAKER_01 4:42

I suppose for 14, 15 years I tried to believe as a social worker and then as a healthcare manager that you could change dementia care from within. But my conclusion at 35 was that it was all about processing people in dehumanised settings that were nothing like anything I'd ever lived in, and where they were classed as almost non-people, where all their expressions of feelings were described as behaviours requiring behaviour management, and where the staff were very detached, and as if it wasn't anything like their family, their mum, their dad, their grandma. And so there was a feeling of I've got to get out of this, not only because of what it was for people with dementia, but I realised it was also my name was on it, and it wanted the name of pride to be on it, and it was also dehumanising to myself as well. That it's as much as it was killing their spirit, it was killing mine.

SPEAKER_02 5:54

I'd I read a uh a piece where you described, I think, your early experience uh in the hospitals as Victorian hospitals that you were walking into where you know somebody who was in charge of the ward or the hospital was was you know greeting you at the door with keys, and there was almost that you haven't said this, but I'm assuming there were almost that asylum feel about the wards. And this is what only from about 30-35 years ago. I mean, it's not that long ago.

SPEAKER_01 6:25

No, and I think history look back and be amazed that that was in the early 1980s, you know, that you walked down long faceless corridors to get to a door with a glass panel where faces are all pressed at the panel, and where the door had to be double unlocked for you to ease in, and then where you saw people naked screaming, help me, help me, help me, calling out for their mother, and where the staff were somehow a bit like one flew over the cooker's nest, as if it was this is what we do, this is what how we run it, and where your stomach lurched, uh what was so obvious, you didn't require to be professional, you just knew this isn't right, yeah, and yet it no one else was shouting that from the rooftops. It was no, this is this is how it's provided back in the late 70s, early 80s.

SPEAKER_02 7:25

What's going through my mind now is that I'd like to think 35 years plus on, we're we're a wee bit more enlightened now. Um, but in some ways we are, and some some ways we're not. Um I I think we've certain in certain care homes, for instance, have gone the other way, where we've almost got four five-star hotel type experiences. And while they look great, they might not be the best for the people who are in there.

SPEAKER_01 7:57

It's uh yeah, like a Mrs. Mertonita debate in dementia care this one, isn't it? People know from my background that I accept some people have had a life of luxury, and therefore that's remains the norm to them to move into luxury hotel-like models of dementia care. But most people have not had cinema rooms and five-star dining and all that uh hotel dementia care can provide. And yes, that in one sense could be seen as honouring older people at the end of their life with that luxury. But it can, if it's not matched with what I call emotional intelligence or a response to the spirit inside people, which is not about surface close, but about what really matters inside, uh, then it becomes another faceless, and I have been known to use the word con to the public and to relatives of buy this and you get the best care. It's not guaranteed. You might, but it's it might also be another version of the asylum.

SPEAKER_02 9:19

And care really is or should be a human thing, shouldn't it? It's not it's not necessarily about the environment per se, but it's about a connection or a relationship that you have with somebody. Do you find that in in the UK we tend to train carers more for compliance than we do for connection?

SPEAKER_01 9:41

Yeah, and and excuse me, this is the big the big one still in 2026 about what is care. And the you know dementia care is highly regulated. Uh masses of compliance organisations have to meet with local authorities, uh, with CQC and other regulatory bodies across the UK, uh, contractual requirements, and that can lead to a mechanistic process-driven model of care that's all about proving to outer authorities that a service is safe and effective, etc. And what can get lost is that in the end, this is about vulnerability. Uh, this is about the core inside of us of what makes us human when we're stripped right back. It's about taking us back to the day in our life we would dread, that we will have all had once where we felt lost, lonely, that we might not come back. And somehow the sector is still nervous about what I call focusing that the core role in dementia care is emo what is known as emotional labour, which is still a professionalised term. What emotional labour means is that you and I connect, reach each other from a position of what it has meant through our lives to really be human on the inside of us, not on the outside. What has been the stuff that's really formed us and connecting to that. And therefore, that's why when I joined a university quite late in life at 61, I moved away from the idea of being a what might have in my career have been obvious to be Professor Dementia Care by saying, no, this is about emotional intelligence.

SPEAKER_02 12:14

And and the university, while you you have that title now and you're you're practicing that, they were a little bit they they questioned that because it was maybe a new concept.

SPEAKER_01 12:26

It's the only uh one of its kind in the UK, and I haven't found in another country yet. It's almost as if it doesn't need to be said that health and social care work is about emotional intelligence. If it needed to be said, then there would be a large number of people in my role as the core of the sector driving health and care to be about emotions at work. And that isn't that isn't happening. And so for me, emotional intelligence is a bit like it's a it's a bit like the IT of emotions. You know, we've we've we've we've all embraced the world of IT, and we've all embraced the add-ons in our lives that it all brings, and the advancement in knowledge, and yet somehow emotional intelligence is lagging way behind the IT world, and dare I say the the you know the AI world that's coming, we still seem to be nervous, uncertain, fearful, doubtful, that actually health and social care, and even more dementia care because it's about feelings, is uh is about mutual emotional intelligence and how we grow that.

SPEAKER_02 13:51

Is it because we're afraid of vulnerability? Because to have uh any degree of emotional intelligence, even you know, high degrees of emotional intelligence, you need to show some you need to show some vulnerability. Do you think there's there's a fear around that?

SPEAKER_01 14:07

Yeah, because I think from school onwards we don't get messages about how to process emotions. We get messages to mask them, uh, compartmentalize them, separate the person and the professional. Uh I've written a lot about you know being a detached professional. And I think we don't value, reward, strengthen people who make the choice in their vulnerability to be more emotionally intelligent about that vulnerability. I think what I think everyone has had a moment of vulnerability in their life, be it divorce, be it child death, be it an addiction, uh, be it grief, whatever it is, and we make our own personal choice whether we're gonna bury that, put it to the side, try and get through it, or whether we incorporate it in the totality of the outer part of who we are. Those people who incorporate it in the outer part of who they are are the people who have either learnt to be, instinctively are, or seek through that life trauma to be emotionally intelligent.

SPEAKER_02 15:41

You're very open about about your life. I mean, if if anybody does a Google search or similar, um they find out lots about you. Um, and particularly on on your website. I like the way that you you describe yourself almost in almost in lists. You say, this is who I am. And and you're quite you're quite deep and and and honest and very open about that. Have you always been like that? Or was it was it something that that came about later in life?

SPEAKER_01 16:14

Uh I think I always was. Uh I think even as the eight-year-old little boy with the policeman at the door came to tell my mum she was a widow with me and a baby, something in me as a young boy decided to wear that on the outside rather than many children would trap it inward. I think that was instinctual. Some would say that might be linked, even though I didn't come out until I was 26 as a gay man, that might be linked, I reflect back, to feeling different as a child, feeling on the edge, not mainstream, not quite right, but not knowing what any of that was. And fortunately that in the 70s, in my social work training, not like social work tends to be now, which is more about care management, social work in the 70s was all about a psychoanalytical view of self. And I remember being pushed as an 18, 19, 20, quite hard to make sense of why you are you as you are? Why do you feel emotionally easily? Why do you break down? Why do you show tears? Uh, why do you talk about death and loss in your family? Uh what is that as a young man, David, when young men don't do that in the mid-70s? And I was helped to see that that could be in the right way channelled and be an asset rather than be a hindrance to me. And so that grew and grew and grew, and I think it grew further because of coming out as a gay man at 26, uh, to leave a marriage and a young toddler at a time 40 years ago when it was viewed as horrendous, horrific, uh, highly stigmatized, highly isolating, never mind, you know, the legal ramifications of being a dad and trying to get custody and all sorts. I think I I suddenly, I was never a blue-eyed boy, I never had blue eyes, but you know, I was doing up until then the the things people do to to form themselves, go to university, professionally train, start a career, whatever. And suddenly at 26 I realised I was right out on the edge. I didn't actually belong. People didn't like me. People were prepared to say it. Uh, people were prepared to put dog shit through your letterbox.

SPEAKER_02 19:19

Whatever it took for them to say, you're you don't belong anymore. And why was why was that, do you think, when you reflect back?

SPEAKER_01 19:28

I think it was at a time well, it was a time uh just before the AIDS crisis and the f all the fear that brought in society. Uh the judgment still in the 70s. It you know, it hadn't been that long since homosexuality was legalised in the mid-60s to when I came out, society still hadn't embraced the equalness and difference of us all. Uh, and to be a young professional guy, that by that time I was you know head of hospital social work, 60 odd social workers, I was young, uh, out and with a partner and child was a I think a big challenge to what people thought was okay in how I represented society. And at that time I was also managing child protection as well. Okay. And people thought it was pretty scandalous that a gay man was making decisions on the protection of children and making them wards of court or whatever.

SPEAKER_02 20:38

I think people were like, yeah, eyes were not open then. So how did you survive that? I mean, I'm thinking, so you were 26, is that right? You were 26. You had you you were responsible for a for a large team of people, professionals. And you said some people were quite happy to talk about their discomfort to your face, but you would have been the the um uh the subject of those water cooler moments, I'm sure, where people wouldn't say anything to your face. How does that manifest itself in you? I take it it makes you does it make you more resilient, does it make you more arrogant? Do you become a wee bit more defensive? How how does how does that manifest?

SPEAKER_01 21:22

I think you survival drown at that point and that it's only a flicker between the two. Uh and I think the survival was I have some people who still love me. I have some people in the profession who tell Me that I'm passionate and make a difference. And I have a child that I love to bits. And although I've had to turn my back now on my religious upbringing because of coming out, it has seeded in me a strong set of values about what matters most in life. And I will prevent the drowning by I suppose the resilience of my life up until that 26. The sense of, well, I've survived some things that other kids didn't. So yeah, I there'll be a way through. There'll be a way through, but not knowing what that way was going to be.

SPEAKER_02 23:06

Because you've also had from what I've read and from what I know, you've you've had to weather storms of criticism with regard to practice, your suggestions about how we should be supporting individuals with a dementia and so on. There's been a lot of pushback in your life, in your professional life as well, hasn't it?

SPEAKER_01 23:29

I think that early story we've just described led to me being zealous about discrimination and discrimination dementia care. Uh furious about the them and us that the sect had created, the separation of people with dementia from the rest of us. Things being done that were beyond imagining to me, that you do to any human being, whether whatever they were experiencing. And realizing in a head way that society was well structured to put people on the on the on the edge of life, and that dementia was what a diagnosis of dementia, or even if you didn't get a diagnosis, if you had the signs, you would be put on the edge of life, along in the same way like women might be, or gay people might be, or people of a different race. And so I became some people might say, yeah, a zealot about I won't tolerate it, and I'll be very vocal, and I will say my peace, but I'll be clever because I'll wrap it in theory and policy and practice. It won't just be coming out as a stream of verbal diarrhea, it will have a whole construction behind it that can't be so easily rubbished or challenged or put down. And I'll collate in dementia care a contrary set of evidence that people will hear or not. And those who didn't want to hear it decided I was trouble, difficult, gobby, or not quite right. Even a suggestion of emotionally unsound. Interestingly, the same words they'd use about people with dementia. Has uh has age mellowed you? No. No. It's I think people around me or people who love and care about me would have hoped at this point that it would have. That I'd be calmer, mellower, more measured. Uh I f I don't think it's done that at all. I think the ferocity is perhaps linked to a personal clock ticking against me. Uh because you know there was a lot of heart disease in my family, and people who know me well, professionally or personally, know our people died of uh heart attacks in my family, and I had mine at 46, quadruple plot bypass. And here I am at you know 68 in a couple of weeks with severe heart failure, that's the formal diagnosis in the last year, and with bypass graph failure that they've said is now inoperable. I'm off to Canada at the weekend on a whole new launch of a whole new model around homelessness. And some people would say, What is that all about? Why not stop, David, now? Uh and for every time or question they ask that, I'm asking it a hundred times to their ones, and I've said it before during my career. How do you stop being who you are? How do you switch off the spirit inside you? Uh, even if it creates being misunderstood, even if it creates enemies, even if it creates estrangement from some people, how do you stop that if that comes from uh I was gonna say broken heartedness, but I I wouldn't say I'm broken, you know. I've been loved to bits, I've been lucky. Uh I've been lucky to have someone always there in the background helping me be who I am and strive on this mission. But I tried getting off it at 60, and that led to a severe clinical depression. The loss of purpose, the loss of mission, the loss of spirit, the loss of being who I am. So the lesson I learned was if you strip yourself back and you take with it your identity, then you're lost. So I think whether you've got dementia, whether you are houseless, whether you are lost in a diagnosis of cancer, isn't all health and social care? Isn't it isn't emotional intelligence saying, create meaning, create identity, hold on to being a feeling-based person more than a thinking-based person, and that's the resilience.

SPEAKER_02 29:15

How do you see your work continuing when you're no longer doing it?

SPEAKER_01 29:24

That's a difficult one, isn't it? Because there's a potential for arrogance that you're the only one who's been doing it. I don't believe I'm the only one who's been doing it. I think I'm perhaps the only one who's articulated it in my particular manner. Uh I've been fortunate to meet loads and loads of people who are out there equally feeling what I feel. Lots of people say that what I've given is permission to them, that lots of people just wanted permission. Uh I suppose what I feel is it might not be something that's tangible. You can't say, here's 150 care homes that David Shear created and modelled, and they're going to spread out. I didn't succeed in that. Uh I haven't radically changed the national curriculum on skills training in dementia care. So if you if you look at tangible holes of things, I don't think they're going to be there. Uh and yet, you know, if you know, to give you an example, you know, to see a care home group name themselves EQ care was, oh, this is rippling out. There are there are other people starting to go in those directions. In the end, what I said it is arrogant, but I'd hoped to leave a legacy feeling.

SPEAKER_00 31:18

That people will feel it more.

SPEAKER_01 31:25

Remember the way I felt it, or decide that actually disruption that I truly believe was needed is needed even more now. And that they say, come on, we'll all be disruptors.

SPEAKER_02 31:44

I mean, there's there's very much that that modest Yorkshireman coming out here, I have to say, but surely when you see yourself quoted or people quoting your work, not just here in the UK, but globally, that must give you a sense of pride.

SPEAKER_01 32:03

I don't know. Uh I've there's a s people have asked me am I gonna write the book, not the dementia care book, the book. Uh and there's been a lot of discussion with my partner in the last year. Am I gonna write the life story, the memoir? And there's a hesitation about it on a number of levels. One, because it's not just my story, it would be other people's who, other people in your family. You know, you can't write about yourself without writing about your perspective on others. So there's a whole privacy respect dilemma about it all. I know the title of the book, uh, as does my partner Peter and one or two close friends, and the title is already Never Quite. And the people who know that title were shocked, perhaps in the way you're asking the question. They said, Never quite, David. And I said, Well, that would be my summary, epitaph, whatever word you want to call. Never quite accepted as an academic, never quite accepted as a gay dad. Never quite mainstream, never quite life being enough, even though I've packed it in like fury and had 150 years, uh a sense that this never quite is about. I thought about, you know, was I brought up to think any nothing was ever good enough, and it wasn't quite that. Uh I had a mother and stepfather who I think were proud, certainly were proud later, as as they saw how I developed as a person, dad, career. I remember my mum writing to me about it. But I suppose for me, they're never quite, it's perhaps inside me.

unknown 34:35

I've been.

SPEAKER_01 34:37

Your mum was very proud, wasn't she? There's always been more. That there's always been more in my sense of there could be more. There could be more done in dementia care, there could be more done in this world to make it more humanised. There could be more I did as a father or partner. I suppose I've I've I've always had that glass half full rather than the way that feeling of that there's gotta be more. But the positive of that is I was predicted at 46 to not live to this. Uh I was told certainly wouldn't make 60. And certainly in the last year, you know, with the bypass graph data and everything, they've said two, three year max, David. You're on, you know, one one graph's gone, totally clogged. It's killed 25% of your heart muscle, so you're really, really now. You know, there was an article given to me, bypass graph fear at the beginning of the end. Uh and so there's there's that's still that feeling of there could be more.

SPEAKER_02 35:59

Do you know what I find fascinating with this is that many people would go, right? Do you know what? If these are going to be my last few years, I'm just gonna relax, I'm gonna take it easy, I'm gonna put my feet up, I'm gonna kick back, I'm gonna spend my money and go on a cruise, whatever it is. But here we are, we're still talking about your work and about this even more to do. I get the feeling that even with this question around mortality, you're you're not you're not giving up without a fight in terms of your your work.

SPEAKER_01 36:33

No, I I have this uh poem for my funeral about uh packing it in like fury. Uh and yeah, the pace isn't right. The pace isn't right, and I'm not a fool. Uh nurses comment about my breathing pattern when I'm speaking. Uh yeah, Peter will talk about you know maintaining codication and spontaneous choking in the night and whatever. Uh but I'm not gonna walk along the seafront each day, am I? And it's not an a holy than thou thing, and it's not a you know, it's not an arrogant thing, I hope, because I'm highly self-critical. Uh it's about I chose what the meaning of life was, uh, and the heart disease speeded me up, it made me more frenetic. Uh, and this period of my life, I thought I was done. I thought I'd done what everyone said. You've got to stop at 60, David, you've got to call it a day in cardiologist words where this is a recipe for disaster, etc. etc. etc. No, that I what I discovered in life is the same as I discovered years ago in dementia care. The recipe for disaster is having no comfort, no belonging, no security, no identity, no meaning. That's the recipe for disaster. And there's and the and the pace is because I've experienced that, it's intolerable to me to think other people are.

SPEAKER_02 39:03

Thank goodness, and we all need a Peter in our lives. How do you think he's coping and how's how's he feeling about all this?

SPEAKER_01 39:16

He'd make other choices. Uh he'd make other choices for me, for himself, and for us. Uh he and smiling, you know, I think about he's you know, since we moved to Margate, you know, off he goes on a Monday to his Buddhist meditation. And sometimes I wonder, I wonder if the meditation is you know the antidote to living with me at this age. Uh I suppose it's it's it's the same, isn't it, as any couple? You know, I've worked with many, many, many couples, you know, where one person in the partnership is living with dementia and one isn't, and you have lots of choices, or perhaps you don't have choices. Perhaps you learn to accommodate, learn to embrace living in the now. You learn to interpret the meaning in another person that's core to them. You try and add to their spirit to keep them alive. You do a range of things that might not be choice, but you still find a way because the alternative is even more unbearable. Yeah, tough tough, tough to acknowledge that you're doing that to someone else. You can you can you can make those choices in your own in your own self, but you know that you are uh you're yeah, you're leaving someone else with some difficult dilemmas that they're gonna have to work through. And that's all about the care you know the cliche, but it is about the caring relationship, isn't it? It is about emotional intelligence in deciding how to be and how to be with someone else.

SPEAKER_02 41:59

Out of all your learning over the years, is this something that's really ultimately surprised you about mankind?

SPEAKER_01 42:23

Yeah, I think what's surprised me is that people like myself are viewed with suspicion. People want to put a label of some sort of disturbance on you that people want to think there has to be some not okay motives because the threat of the unmasked is too close to be sounds grandiose, embraced, accepted, and that you know people know in my dementia care work I talk about in dementia care homes staff divide into the three groups for me the naturals, the learners, and the fighters. And the naturals will be the people who listen to this and just think, why is that even worth a podcast? Thousands of people could sit and do that podcast. All this talking about is a life journey that thousands have, the emotions that thousands have, processing the ups and downs of life and the naturals, but the naturals also would I think think that I had something to feel and say, and they'd and they'd connect. The puzzle learned. Are the people in dementia care who yeah find it all very strange? Why does he want to get rid of uniforms? Why does he want to get rid of badges? Why does he want us to eat with people with dementia? Why does he want us to meet this thing about meaning and identity and the inside of people? What what why is he about but but are open and thinking, but actually there might be something in it? It's not it's it's not essentially where I am, it's not how I naturally be. But I might I might accept learning to be this, and it'll take me time, as it can in life, for people to become more connected. So back to your original question, the surprise is the fighters. That I didn't. I grew up in the Methodist Church, I grew up in Bradford, which was a multiracial city in the late 60s, 70s. I didn't grow up knowing about the fighters. Uh perhaps I was more protected than I thought I was as a child and teenager. Uh are the fighters the frightened? The fighters fight hard, dirty, will do whatever to take you down, and will do anything to protect status, power, control, be that in their personal lives or in their jobs. Can they be converted? Yeah, that's that's perhaps that's the other surprise. Some of the best people in Dementica I've met, I met as a fighter. A person who I thought, no chance, they'll never get it. I might as well be speaking some language they've never heard of, uh, and who initially have resisted any change, but who have been the people who eventually, and I always think of particularly uh a care worker in home in Ireland who ran down the hallway, almost bowling me over, saying, Look at me, look at me, look at this, this is all amazing. I've always wanted to be this, and now I know how to be. And you've given me and it was like, oh my god, the person in the staff team that I would not have so, yeah, that's the other surprise about fighters. Never give up on them.

SPEAKER_02 46:39

And as we're coming towards the end of the interview, first of all, thank you for being so honest and your candor. And I I I thought the interview would go this way, even though this is our first time meeting, so thank you so much for that. Um a call to arms, then, because none of us go on forever. Um, and I alluded to it in an earlier question about the continuance of your work, and yes, other people are doing it. Uh, and you've spoken to thousands of people, not only here in the UK but around the world, who have adopted what you've suggested and the good old common sense. Um, but to keep going, to get us through the next five, ten years when we're when we're supporting people with a dementia, what do we need to be mindful of? What is the what is the rallying cry here?

SPEAKER_01 47:37

I think the rallying cry is probably the one I've always had in dementia care. I used to, and I said for years and years and years, people living with dementia are more feeling beings than thinking beings. That when you can't rely on facts, logic, reason, memory with dementia, you rely on this. And living with dementia, you become heightened as a feeling being to other people who are or aren't, and they can spot you a mile off. And I think in the world of AI that's coming and the care sector in the next 20-30 years is to say actually that's the same rallying cry to everyone in the health and social care sector. We're all more feeling beings than thinking beings. And the only way you can use value process your thinking and max your thinking is if you do it through being emotionally intelligent. That I believe the next generation in this phenomenal technological age, the next generation will be the amazing leaders, the amazing people in health social care and in dementia care will be the real people who've known how to max out their feeling being first.

SPEAKER_02 49:04

I've got one more question, but I need permission to ask it.

SPEAKER_01 49:09

Who would you dedicate your life's work to I would dedicate my nice work one thousand percent to Peter, who was an unout gay man who had no gay relationship, whose mother didn't know, whose work didn't know, and who at 36 made a most massive life leap to join this raw emotional guy and who's had to make that leap every day through 36 years that have when I've made them at times quite tricky and difficult. Beyond Peter though, I would I would like to I'd like to dedicate it to the fighters who don't believe me, the people in life who are estranged because they couldn't go there for whatever reason the people who have not had all my life resources that have enable me to be who I am and who think they are floundering, even though they're only a flutter away from somebody like me. I would dedicate them to find in that flutter that they can also be vulnerable and strong.

SPEAKER_02 51:47

Professor David Sheard, it's been an absolute pleasure. Thank you very much indeed.

unknown 51:52

Thanks, but