Dementia can be a distressing condition, for the sufferer, and for families and other carers. Management of dementia is never easy, and involves facing some unpleasant problems and difficult choices. The right approach and expertise can minimise the unpleasantness and make dementia manageable, while inexperienced or inexpert management has the potential to cause unnecessary distress and disability, mis-directed resources, frustrated care staff, unduly long periods spent in hospital and premature care home placement.
Dementia Care is a practical manual for health and sociacare professionals in their encounters with people with dementia. It covers a wide range of information in a short, easily-accessible handbook format and broadly follows the journey of a person with dementia from first presentation to health or social services, through problems and their management, to the final stages of the illness. The book is rooted in the extensive experience of the authors in managing dementia in the community, in hospital and care homes and hopes to make the necessary expertise available and accessible in a form that will be useful to the whole range of medical, health and social care staff looking after people with dementia and their families.

"Person-Centred Approaches to Dementia Care" traces the origin of the person-centred tradition, and describes and critically evaluates the theory and the practice of validation therapy. Resolution therapy and the work of the late Tom Kitwood represent an attempt to move beyond a preoccupation with the symptoms of dementia by reaching into the subjective reality of the person who remains behind the disease. The leading European exponent of pre-therapy, Dion Van Werde, co-authors a chapter which explores the potential for making genuine therapeutic contact with those who have dementia. The author concludes with an overview of the latest developments in the psychological care of people with dementia, and an assessment of the future prospects of person centred care.