Rethinking Communication guide to advanced dementia

that each person retains. Everyone’s abilities and behaviours differ. Curiosity becomes key to getting to know, or to know anew, the person for whom we are caring. What is the alternative to speech? If speech-based interaction eventually becomes unfeasible for a person with advanced dementia, this does not mean that they have lost the urge or capacity to communicate. Tom Kitwood put it this way in his 1997 book Dementia Reconsidered : “In the course of dementia, a person will try to use whatever resources he or she still has available. If some of the more sophisticated means of action have dwindled away, it may be necessary to fall back on ways that are more basic, and more deeply learned; some of these were learned in early childhood.” (pg. 75)