Caregiver Training Catalogue

Person-Centered Education for Quality Dementia Care Programs Catalogue

Encouraging communication and connections between individuals living with dementia and those who care for and about them.

What Is Unique About Care Beyond Words?

Our Person-Centered training programs encourage participants to connect with the individuals they serve.

Person-Centered communication focuses on the individual’s remaining strengths and abilities, environmental influences and the efforts of others to connect with the Person.

The Advantages of Care Beyond Words training programs include: -Recognizing how at every stage of memory loss, the individual is still there and is still communicating.

-Promoting a transformational shift in the participant’s attitude-that is, how to connect with the person with dementia.

-Encouraging participants to draw from their inner resources whenever needed, thereby reducing the stress of the caregiver role.

-Improving the well-being and quality of life (including reducing anxiety and agitation) for individuals with memory loss.

“ This is the best training I’ve received for understanding people with Alzheimer’s. I see now that they are still there, and that their actions have meaning.”

Alice – Caregiver in Alzheimer’s Division

Our Services for…

Skilled & Long-term Care, Special Care Teams, Assisted Living, Adult Day Care & In-Home Providers -Staff Education and Training -Customized Leadership Training -Staff Development Days - Leader Retreats - Community Education & Outreach Volunteer Programs -Encourage, train, and support volunteers in a variety of outreach, healthcare and community organizations Families and Friends -Person-Centered Care at Home -Self-care for Caregivers -Choosing Care Providers -Connecting with community support

Our “Give Back Program” donates a portion of our time and services to the clients we serve and Alzheimer’s support organizations.

Employers: -Enhance Wellness Education - Workplace Essentials Training - Provide expertise to EAP partners -Support the needs of employees caring for aging parents

Conference Organizers -Concurrent/Break-out Sessions -Keynote Presentations

Dementia Care Essentials: Essentials of Person-Centered Care This workshop is designed to provide an introduction to Person-Centered Care. Participants will explore basic principles and techniques for connecting and communicating with individuals at all stages of dementia progression. Workshop goals include enhancing the quality of life, fostering sensitivity and recognizing the individual needs of residents with memory loss.

Coping with Memory Loss Memory loss is a distressing part of dementia, both for the person with dementia and for those around them. Participants will discuss solutions for common problems caregivers encounter when working with people with dementia. This workshop emphasizes the importance of routines, reminders and calendars in encouraging individuals with memory loss to make daily decisions.

Caregiver Competencies Competencies are important measures or standards of behavior. This session educates participants about the attributes and skills needed for ideal dementia care. Participants will be introduced to supportive care giving behaviors that best improve the quality of life of the Residents in their care. Competency levels from novice to mastery are outlined with measures of demonstration at each level.

Validating Feelings Validation is a useful method for understanding how individuals with dementia express their needs and feelings through their behaviors. Validation techniques can help the caregiver recognize the trigger or underlying concern and can then assist in addressing the individual’s concern. Validating feelings is central to providing Person-Centered Care and supporting the dignity and quality of life for individuals with memory loss.

Self-Care for Staff Caregivers Caregiving for residents with memory loss can be very stressful, both physically and emotionally.

Overwhelmed staff members often leave their jobs or face each workday disillusioned or believing they don’t make a difference in the lives of the individuals they serve. Participants will learn ways to relax and to identify resources for support before getting overwhelmed/stressed. Topics will include checking stress levels, ways to reduce stress and tips on getting support and help from their peers (and from the persons they serve).

“ This is the kind of training everyone who works with seniors should receive. Our caregivers can be a tough audience, but in the days following the inservice, they were still talking about how much they enjoyed it, and I can see how their skills have been strengthened. You really made an impact!”

Sandy – RN & Staff Education Manager

Dementia Care Essentials: Activity Focused Care With memory support the goal, activity focused care includes every encounter, exchange and event a Resident has with each staff member, volunteer, relative or other individual. This workshop provides practical strategies that are easily incorporated into activities of daily living and that promote the Resident’s cognitive, physical, psychosocial, and spiritual well being. These strategies will assist the caregiver in helping Residents find meaning in their days.

Our training and consulting services support organizations serving clients touched by memory loss across the continuum of care and within the private home setting. Whether you select our “off the shelf” or custom designed programs, your organization will receive outstanding person-centered and evidence-based instruction.

Alzheimer’s & Dementia Basics (Recommended for New Employee Orientation or Annual Review) Participants will be introduced (or reintroduced) to the basics of Alzheimer’s disease and dementia terminology, signs of disease progression and care needs at specific stages of the disease. Communication skills, common behaviors and interventions associated with Alzheimer’s and dementia, burnout and burnout prevention will also be discussed.

Using Story and Reminiscence Studies have shown that these activities improve levels of cognition and mood, improve functional ability and reduce the symptoms of depression as well as reducing the strain and burnout experienced by caregivers. Participants will learn practical methods for utilizing story and reminiscence when caring for individuals with memory loss.

Understanding and Addressing Challenging Behavior This workshop is designed to empower caregivers with a deeper understanding of the behaviors of individuals with dementia and how to be more effective and confident in responding to challenging behaviors. Common concerns include repetitive behaviors, wandering, aggression, agitation, hallucinations, paranoia and sundowning.

Person-Centered Communication and Attentive Listening This workshop explores the techniques for listening with empathy and practicing person-centered communication with residents, families, coworkers and others. These skills provide the foundation for compassionate care when supporting individuals with dementia and memory loss. Participants will experience hands-on practice and learn ways to be a more effective communicator, a more compassionate listener and how to build rapport and trust with others.

Our Leadership Programs: Sensitivity & Inclusion – Creating a Respectful Workplace Hiring, developing and motivating an increasingly diverse workforce are top priorities in successful organizations. Providing services to and working with others who don’t share the same background, beliefs or traditions are often key challenges in today’s workplace. This workshop will explore how participants can leverage diversity to improve quality of care as well as discover the benefits of transforming negative attitudes and resistance into appreciation and cooperation.

Legendary Service Legendary Service is defined as consistently delivering ideal customer service that improves client and family satisfaction and improves the competitive advantage for the organization. Legendary Service focuses on caregivers as primary customer service providers and how they can be empowered to provide individualized and person-centered care. Leaders have a unique role as cultural champions and can create the framework for organizations to be recognized for Legendary Service.

Leading Culture Change Culture change is a movement that is gaining recognition and momentum in the delivery of person-centered care in senior living communities, and encompasses so much more than updating polices, procedures and models of care. This workshop explores the opportunities, barriers, and solutions surrounding the role of leaders and supervisors in creating and sustaining culture change.

Managing Performance for Improving Person-Centered Care This workshop works with leaders to review their organizational/departmental mission statements and strategic goals for improving person-centered care.

Participants will explore the role of job descriptions in ensuring alignment with current standards and objectives.

Workshop will strengthen the leader’s ability to conduct effective performance appraisals, and will develop a feedback-rich culture that brings about positive outcomes for clients, families and employees.

Attracting and Retaining the A+ Caregiver Leaders across the continuum of care recognize a host of workforce challenges, including caregiver staffing shortages, high turnover and the need to do more with less. Factors affecting the caregiver workforce include the perceived value of caregiving, increasing budgetary restrictions and changes in the senior healthcare industry. This workshop will strengthen leadership skills including attracting, retaining and developing highperforming caregivers who take pride in their role in providing the highest quality of care.

Managing Generational Diversity Age and generation differences in the workplace often hinder optimum performance and act as catalysts for communication break-downs. This workshop helps participants understand the differences in work perspectives and sources of motivation for the four key generations working today: Traditionalists, Boomers, Gen X, and Gen Y/Millenials. Participants will explore strategies for bridging the gap between generational differences, avoiding conflict and increasing productivity in their generationally diverse workplaces.

Empowering Teams for Improved Quality of Care and Quality of Life Great teams don’t happen by chance.

As healthcare and senior services organizations begin restructuring corporate cultures with empowered employee teams, employees across the organization must be more involved in the decision-making process.

This workshop will dive deeper in to the ways truly empowered employee teams can improve customer satisfaction, increase employee productivity, raise quality and lower costs.

Soul & Spirit Workshops: Listening is an Act of Love At Care Beyond Words, we believe that even when language and reasoning skills are in decline, people with Alzheimer’s are still communicating. We are learning to listen. We understand the importance of listening in an intentional, compassionate and fully present way. This kind of listening feels at times like a lost art in our fast-paced, multi-tasking, highly cognitive culture. This course explores techniques for use in every-day life to listen generously, and listen as an act of love.

Hope as a Therapeutic Tool Learning to connect and communicate beyond words creates hope. Hope is a powerful tool for alleviating the suffering caused by isolation, loneliness and living with serious illness and cognitive decline. Hope strengthens not only the spirit, but the body and mind as well. This course demonstrates how hope is a tool in person-centered care.

The Poetry of Alzheimer's Poetry and metaphor have long been important ways of conveying truth. People living with memory loss often speak in ways that convey the wisdom and clarity of poetry. Poetry often invites us to listen with our heart, to get out of our heads and feel the earth beneath our feet. This course will explore poetry written by individuals living with memory loss, those who love them, and poems that teach us a new language, a language of the heart.

Journaling to Strengthen the Soul Working with and caring for individuals with advancing Alzheimer’s is difficult work, physically, emotionally, and spiritually. Journaling, as a stress management and self-exploration tool, is not the same as simply recording the happenings in one’s life. Journaling allows people to clarify their thoughts and feelings, thereby gaining valuable selfknowledge. Journaling about difficult experiences helps one process them by fully exploring and releasing the emotions involved, and by engaging both hemispheres of the brain in the process, allowing the experience to become fully integrated in one’s mind.

The Artist's Way with Alzheimer's This course explores the art, and heart, of healing; the difference between curing and healing, and the importance of creativity in the caregiver’s self-care. We are all creative. Creativity is a natural life force that all can experience. This course draws from insights outlined in Julia Cameron’s “The Artist’s Way.” It is not necessary for participants to have had prior exposure to the book in order to enjoy this course.

Our Soul & Spirit Workshops are ideal for retreats, community events and conferences – and reinforce the spirituality of living with , loving someone with or caring for someone touched by memory loss.

Soul & Spirit Workshops: The language of companionship is a unique one To reach someone through the heart is other than reaching them through words.

Besides words, allusions and arguments The heart knows a hundred thousand ways to speak. …. Rumi

Anam Cara - Being a Soul Friend The term “Anam Cara” comes from ancient celtic wisdom and means being a soul friend. Friendship is always an act of recognition of the other person. As caregivers, our companionship is powerful medicine. We all have the capacity to be healers through our ability to be present to another.

“One of the tasks of true friendship is to listen compassionately and creatively to the hidden silences. Often secrets are not revealed in words, they lie concealed in the silence between the words or in the depth of what is unsayable between two people.”― John O’Donohue, Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom Mindfulness in the Care of Memory Loss Our capacity to be present to others is cultivated through and grounded in mindfulness. The ability to sustain presence in the face of human suffering is not an easy task, nor one that can be done without equal care of the soul of the caregiver.

This course provides simple yet practical tools for bringing mindfulness into our daily lives and work. Mindfulness allows us to tap into inner resources and strengths that are too often trapped behind barriers we’ve created. Participants learn the keys to opening these inner chambers, stabilizing their thoughts, and sustaining presence.

Creating Legacy Letters This course shows participants the key elements of personal legacy letters.

Participants will be invited to create a personal legacy letter as part of the course, along with tips for helping others create them. Legacy letters are written to share what has been most important in your life with the most important people in your life. They speak from your heart in your own voice. The words you write can bring a deeper meaning to your life in the present as well as create healing in your relationships.

Music and Memory Music has power—especially for individuals with Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias. Music can spark compelling outcomes even in the very late stages of the disease. When used appropriately, music can shift mood, manage stress-induced agitation, stimulate positive interactions, facilitate cognitive function, and coordinate motor movements. Participants will learn practical ways to incorporate music in to the daily care of individuals and will witness some of the profound effects music can bring to those suffering from Memory Loss.

Chronos & Kairos, a Tale of Two Times The Greeks had two words for time. One word was chronos – quantitative time, time as duration, clock or calendar time. The other word was kairos – qualitative time, the right time, the significant time. This workshop explores how the kairos occasions of life – those moments that give meaning and purpose to our existence, to the days and how they can teach us to view aging and age-related cognitive decline as as a shift in our internal time zone. Connecting and communicating with individuals with Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia invite us to live in kairos time. I think that it is these kairos moments that are being suggested by novelist Frederick Buechner when he writes, “Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery that it is…. because in the last analysis all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace.”

Care Beyond Words Care Beyond Words is a division of Inclusion HR, LLC, offering training, speaking and consulting services with an emphasis on inclusion through strengthening person-centered communication, trust and relationship-building skills. We are recognized for listening to each client in order to build your mission, brand, values and audience in to the design of every solution.

Anna has inspired over 3,000 participants on the local, state and national level to apply person-centered communication techniques in their lives and work. Anna earned a Bachelors Degree in Psychology from the University of Tulsa and Masters Degree in Human Relations from the University of Oklahoma.

Anna’s work within the dementia care field began while working for Pathways Community Hospice.

Community Service & Advocacy:

Anna Lehrke, MHR,

Executive Director

• Board of Directors – Lewis & Clark SHRM, Community Involvement Chair • Board of Directors – Community Council of St. Charles County • Committee Member – United Way’s Volunteer Certification Committee

Past Workshops Include: - Missouri League for Nursing - National Hospice & Palliative Care Organization - Regional End of Life Conference - BCI Inc Leadership Training on Sensitivity & Inclusion - Missouri Alliance for Home Care & Private Duty Conference - Professional Volunteer Managers Alliance - Metropolitan Volunteer Managers Association - Greater St. Louis Hospice Organization - Social Workers in Long Term Care - Long Term Care Educators Association - Person-Centered Communication Skills Training for: Pathways Community Hospice Right at Home Private Duty Martha’s Hands Private Duty Community Care Center of Lemay Lindenwood University

Christian NE Hospital St. Agnes Home Mercy Hospital Washington University Webster University

My vision is a world where people who communicate in “other than verbal” ways can participate fully in life and experience optimum wellness, dignity and joy.

Care Beyond Words

Training Topics Include: Care Essentials Person-Centered Communication Understanding Dementia Behaviors Overcoming Barriers to Presence Connecting & Communicating with Dementia Validation Techniques Self-Care for Care Professionals Creating a Healing Environment of Care Normal Brain Aging Vs. Dementia Our Amazing, Aging Brain Establishing Trust Through Empathy

Soul & Spirit Listening is an Act of Love Hope as a Therapeutic Tool Valuing Vulnerability Chronos & Kairos, a Time for Each Compassion Fatigue

Workplace Essentials Respectful Workplace Giving & Receiving Feedback Conflict Management Creating a Learning Culture Sensitivity & Anti-Harassment

Participatory Leadership Cultural Competency Solutions for Stress Diversity & Inclusion Work/Life Balance

We Custom-Develop Each Training for Your Needs Contact us at: 314-280-9973 or AnnaLehrke@Outlook.com www.CareBeyondWords.com