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<\/p>\nCreating meaningful, sensory activities for people living with dementia can be challenging, particularly when many traditional options feel more suited to children than adults with a lifetime of lived experience behind them.<\/p>\n
At Cooinda Aged Care Facility in Coonabarabran, a specially made activity board is helping bridge that gap, offering residents something familiar, purposeful and real to engage with.<\/p>\n
The idea was brought to life by Mitchell Brain, a Coonabarabran local who recently returned to his hometown and signed up as a volunteer at the facility.<\/p>\n
“I just wanted to create something people would recognise and be engaged in,” Mr Brain said.<\/p>\n
Measuring 1.8 metres wide and 90 centimetres high, the activity board sits under a shelter in the facility’s gardens and is packed with about 30 different hands-on activities.<\/p>\n
“The basic idea is to have people engaged in what’s on the board,” he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“So you push and pull and press things.”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The activity board encourages engagement, movement and familiarity for dementia patients. (Supplied: Cooinda Coonabarabran)<\/p>\n
Work that still matters<\/p>\n
Built using real mechanical components, the board includes items such as spark plugs and parts from an old lawnmower engine.<\/p>\n
The materials were chosen to reflect the backgrounds of many residents.<\/p>\n
“I made sure it was safe and wanted it to last forever,” Mr Brain said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“So I made it very strong and sturdy.”<\/p>\n
Sharon Edmonstone, lifestyle coordinator at Cooinda, said the idea came from conversations about residents’ former working lives.<\/p>\n
“Often we have residents who were farmers and they are still wanting to check on machinery and fix things that need fixing,” she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“So we discussed an idea of putting something together that would allow our ex-farmers to get up and go to work.”<\/p>\n
While commercial activity boards do exist, Ms Edmonstone said many were unsuitable for adults.<\/p>\n
“They are very childlike, so we were more after something that adults could use,” she said.<\/p>\n
“Our residents can now go out and fix things like spark plugs, an old lawnmower engine; things to replicate what they might have done on the farm.<\/p>\n
“We have a couple of residents who were farmers and they love going out to it to fix things and muck around with it. It sparks their cognition and provides a bit of dignity to our residents because it’s real.”<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n
Many residents at Cooinda are former farmers who like working with their hands.\u00a0 (Supplied: Cooinda Coonabarabran)<\/p>\n
Where memory meets muscle<\/p>\n
Bruce McDermaid from the Dubbo Dementia Alliance said activities like this play a vital role in supporting people living with dementia.<\/p>\n
“Engaging in any sort of activity is wonderful for people with dementia because it engages the brain,” he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“A lot of studies have shown that if you use the brain, it extends the use of your brain, your activity and your lifestyle a lot longer.”<\/p>\n
Mr McDermaid said hands-on tasks also provide an important sense of achievement.<\/p>\n
“Physical activity and dexterity do deteriorate across the journey with dementia, so being able to do what to us is a normal everyday task, but for people with advancing dementia becomes more of a challenge and gives them a sense of achievement as well,” he said.<\/p>\n
He said this was particularly important for men who had spent their lives in manual work.<\/p>\n
“Especially for men who have used their hands all their lives and possibly never done a crossword in their life, these are the things that will stimulate them and give them a challenge and a sense of purpose throughout the day.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Creating meaningful, sensory activities for people living with dementia can be challenging, particularly when many traditional options feel…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":207192,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[66338,5303,163,85,46,94954,3399],"class_list":{"0":"post-207191","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health","8":"tag-aged-care","9":"tag-dementia","10":"tag-health","11":"tag-il","12":"tag-israel","13":"tag-regional","14":"tag-rural"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207191","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=207191"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207191\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/207192"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=207191"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=207191"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=207191"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}