Association for Dementia Studies: 2015 Seminar Series

The Meeting Centres Support Programme:

Helping people to live well with dementia

Professor Rose-Marie Dröes

VU University Medical Centre, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

In her lecture Professor Dröes will explain the reason for the development of the programme, its theoretical background and practical content as well as the effects achieved with it in the Netherlands.

This Seminar will be introduced by Jeremy Hughes, Chief Executive of the Alzheimer’s Society. The Alzheimer’s Society is partnering with the Association for Dementia Studies in implementing the first Meeting Centre in the UK locally in Droitwich Spa, Worcestershire.

The 2015 Hennell Award will also be presented following the seminar. The award is made in the memory of Brian Hennell to a student on an Association for Dementia Studies Course who has demonstrated excellence and innovation in care.

Rose-Marie Dröes is Professor of Psychosocial Care for People with Dementia at the Department of Psychiatry of VUmc in Amsterdam. She graduated as a human movement scientist, specialising in psychiatry and psycho-geriatrics in 1981. She obtained her PhD (1991) on the subject of psychosocial treatment, especially psychomotor therapy, for people with dementia. As a theoretical basis for psychosocial treatment she developed the Adaptation-Coping model. This model explains changes in behaviour and mood in people with dementia partly as the result of a complex psycho-dynamic process which takes place within the person living with dementia and in interaction with the person’s environment. The model gives insight in the different ways people deal with their dementia and as such can help family members and professionals to better understand the behaviour of the person with dementia. The Adaptation-Coping model forms the theoretical basis of the Meeting Centres Support Programme developed by Dröes in the early 1990’s to support people with dementia and their carers in living with dementia. In the last two decades this support programme has been successfully disseminated to more than 125 meeting centres in the Netherlands.