Welcome to the first issue of Elderly Care Matters

    Hi, I'm Robin Dynes and I am very pleased to welcome you to the first issue of Elderly Care Matters. Danny Walsh and I will be writing Robin Dynesalternative issues and in my future issues, I will be providing you with articles in order to share guidance, food for thought, ideas and exercises to stimulate your creativity. I have over 25 years' of experience working in numerous care settings and as a trainer, and have been a consultant to local authority partnerships which provide services in the community, for day centres and residential homes. I have also published a number of resources through Speechmark, which include:

The Reminiscence Puzzle Book, The Memory Box, The Group Leader’s Toolkit, The Non-Competitive Activity Book, Memory Games For Groups, Creative Writing in Groupwork and Creative Games in Groupwork. Next...

Speech Therapy Assessment Tips For smooth Disorders (2)

Card image

One tool that is used for therapy are picture cards. Picture a day-to-day life and everyday objects can be used to improve and develop the skills of word recall. Picture cards can act as a visual cue to enhance the learning process of Aphasic. This can also help improve the vocabulary of the patient.

With the image display card and repetitively saying aloud the names of objects in the picture, the patient will be able to weak muscles and practice vocalization....NEXT....

E-mail Writing

Read the email carefully and check out any vocabulary you don't know.

Dear Mr Avis,

I'm writing to you again regarding the £5232 that your company owes to
my company.

You received delivery of our goods more than three months ago. You
were well aware that payment was due at thirty days. However, you have
made no attempt whatsoever to pay us.

When we spoke to you two weeks ago, you told us that a cheque was "in
the post". No such cheque has been received.

Unless we get full and final payment within five working days, we
shall have no alternative but to pursue this matter through the courts.

Yours sincerely,


H. Segal

Innovative Speech Therapy

Innovative Speech Therapy is dedicated toward offering unique effective speech therapy for children and adults and online coaching and training for professionals and caregivers.




Be Proactive! Learn about state-of-the-art tools of technology to help maximize speech therapy outcomes.


Communication, learning and thinking can be challenging due to a stroke, head injury, developmental disability or learning challenge. Joan Green specializes in using traditional therapy methods, a life participation approach and state-of-the-art technology to help people of all ages who have a wide range of communication and cognitive challenges.


Individual Speech Therapy - Intensive outpatient and residential individual therapy options are available

Training Opportunities - In-person and online coaching and training for professionals and families to learn more about how to integrate technology into the rehabilitation and education process to improve communication, cognition and literacy


Click here to take a look at Joan Green's new resource guide.
Innovative Speech Therapy's Mission Statement: Next..............

Thank you for June C.

B lood Clots/Stroke - They Now Have a Fourth Indicator, the Tongue


I will continue to forward this every time it comes around!

STROKE:Remember the 1st Three Letters....S.T.R.


My nurse friend sent this and encouraged me to post it and spread the word.
I agree.


If everyone can remember something this simple, we could save some folks.
Seriously..


Please read:
STROKE IDENTIFICATION:


During a BBQ, a friend stumbled and took a little fall - she assured everyone that she was fine (they offered to call paramedics) .she said she had just tripped over a brick because of her new shoes.

They got her cleaned up and got her a new plate of food. While she appeared a bit shaken up, Ingrid went about enjoying herself the rest of the evening


Ingrid's husband called later telling everyone that his wife had been taken to the hospital - (at 6:00 pm Ingrid passed away.) She had suffered a stroke at the BBQ. Had they known how to identify the signs of a stroke, perhaps Ingrid would be with us today. Some don't die. they end up in a helpless, hopeless condition instead.


It only takes a minute to read this...


A neurologist says that if he can get to a stroke victim within 3 hours he can totally reverse the effects of a stroke...totally. He said the trick was getting a stroke recognized, diagnosed, and then getting the patient medically cared for within 3 hours, which is tough.

RECOGNIZING A STROKE

Thank God for the sense to remember the '3' steps, STR . Read and Learn!

Sometimes symptoms of a stroke are difficult to identify. Unfortunately, the lack of awareness spells disaster. The stroke victim may suffer severe brain damage when people nearby fail to recognize the symptoms of a stroke.

Now doctors say a bystander can recognize a stroke by asking three simple questions:

S *Ask the individual to SMILE.

T *Ask the person to TALK and SPEAK A SIMPLE SENTENCE (Coherently)
(i.e.. It is sunny out today.)

R *Ask him or her to RAISE BOTH ARMS.

If he or she has trouble with ANY ONE of these tasks, call emergency number immediately and describe the symptoms to the dispatcher.

New Sign of a Stroke -------- Stick out Your Tongue
NOTE: Another 'sign' of a stroke is this: Ask the person to 'stick' out his tongue.. If the tongue is 'crooked', if it goes to one side or the other, that is also an indication of a stroke.

A cardiologist says if everyone who gets this e-mail sends it to 10 people; you can bet that at least one life will be saved.

I have done my part. Will you?

Coping with aphasia

From Washington state to the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally in South Dakota, Yuman Joseph Boze likes to travel.

But his plans were put on hold after he suffered a stroke in March 2008.

Now Boze has been diagnosed with aphasia, a disorder that affects people's communication skills.

Corinna Atchly, a speech language pathologist with Yuma Rehab, said there are two types of aphasia: receptive and expressive.

Receptive, she said, affects a patient's ability to understand and make sense of what he or she reads, hears or sees. Patients with expressive aphasia, she said, have difficulty verbalizing wants and needs, have trouble writing or making gestures. Next..

Easier word processing for someone with aphasia

Jack Schofield, the technology expert at The Guardian was asked about alternatives to using Open Office's predictive text for someone who has acquired asphasia after having a stroke.

There are several programs that are designed for people with physical impairments or severe dyslexia that should be more useful than Open Office's predictive text or Microsoft Office's AutoComplete.NEXT...

Aphasia and text writing.

Background: Good writing skills are needed in almost every aspect of life today, and there is a growing interest in research into acquired writing difficulties. Most of the findings reported so far, however, are based on words produced in isolation. The present study deals with the production of entire texts. Aims: The aim was to characterize written narratives produced by a group of participants with aphasia. Methods & Procedures: Eight persons aged 28-63 years with aphasia took part in the study. They were compared Next...

Virtual therapist helps aphasia patients recover language

by ChiChi Madu
Feb 26, 2009

Last summer Mercy Gilpatric, an elderly North Side woman, had a stroke that wiped out her language abilities. Now, with the help of a "virtual therapist," she is regaining her language, one sentence at a time.

“It’s mind-boggling,” she said of the improvement she has made due to her training program. “The training has helped my reading so much.”

Gilpatric has a condition known as aphasia, which affects more than one million Americans, said Leora Cherney, director of the Center for Aphasia Research at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago.

Cherney developed a computer program known as ORLA, short for Oral Reading for Language in Aphasia, to help these patients recover.

ORLA features a virtual therapist known as "Ms. Pat," an avatar who guides patients through sentence reading exercises and asks patients to point to the words as they say them aloud....next...

Aphasia/dysphasia: can't talk, not allowed to talk.

Visiting Dyscover this morning; http://dyscover.ndo.co.uk: this is a local support group for people with aphasia or dysphasia – no speech or disrupted speech, usually because of stroke or brain disease. As you talk with them, you have to wait while they find the words they want to say, and test out what you have understood to make sure you picked it up right. One interesting positive for the group was the chance to talk about interesting topics in discussion groups. At home, they have discussed everything with their spouse, and visitors often do not wait comfortably for them to take time to speak, so they don’t get the chance to spread their wings in a discussion like the rest of us do over coffee or a meal break.

I connect it with people’s response to hearing that you have cancer or you’re dying; people don’t know how to respond to you, so you become isolated. My ambition for the future: we should all learn how to take time to listen to people.

Aphasia caregivers

Caregivers for persons living with aphasia (PLWA) are often misinformed, confused, scared, and overwhelmed when their loved one experiences a stroke with aphasia. I've found that not many therapists or doctors give the caregivers the right kind of information--what is it? Will it get better? Who can I talk to? Does anyone else have it? and so on. Shockingly few medical personnel will give information about aphasia support groups or the National Aphasia Association website. Very few couples are given encouragement to continue therapies after the insurance runs out. No one is given hope for progress, it seems. If you have hope, you will often be told that you are in denial about your spouse's capabilities.

Frequently, I will see older couples who have been married for 40+ years, in which the husband now has aphasia and the wife is now the primary caregiver. Often, but not always, the husband was the main.........NEXT...........

http://www.theaudeo.com/

The "AUDEO" will give me the thing I need more than anything else; the ability to talk to my children. Dave (age 41, diagnosed with ALS in 2004)	The Audeo is being developed to create a human-computer interface for communication without the need of physical motor control or speech production. Using signal processing, unpronounced speech representing the thought of the mind can be translated from intercepted neurological signals.
Do you think the Audeo could help you or somebody you know? If so, click here.
By interfacing near the source of vocal production, the Audeo has the potential to restore communication to people who are unable to speak. The proposed solution is a featherweight wireless device resting over the vocal cords capable of transmitting neurological information from the brain. Using data analysis, this information can be processed into synthesized speech or a menu selection capable of conveying the basic necessities of human life. Current Applications of the Audeo: Speech – After a recent breakthrough, we have developed a method to exceed individual words and have shown the ability to produce continuous speech with high accuracy from the neurological signals. Wheelchair Control – By incorporating the Audeo with additional hardware, we have successfully controlled a wheelchair without the need of physical movement. To see the wheelchair in action, watch the wheelchair demonstration. If you are a researcher, scientist, or interested in more information about the technology behind The Audeo, please sign up here. We will send you more information or demonstration when it becomes available. This technology is being developed in collaboration with the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago and the University of Illinois and supported by the National Center for Supercomputing Applications and National Instruments.