Books for Family Carers
What We Carry
In caring for her aging mother and her own young daughter, writer Maya Shanbhag Lang–“a new voice of the highest caliber” (Rebecca Makkai)–confronts the legacy of family myths and how the stories shared between parents and children reverberate through generations: a deeply moving memoir about immigrants and their native-born children, the complicated love between mothers and daughters, and the discovery of strength.
How much can you judge another woman’s choices? What if that woman is your mother?
Maya Shanbhag Lang grew up idolizing her brilliant mother, an accomplished physician who immigrated to the United States from India and completed her residency, all while raising her children and keeping a traditional Indian home. She had always been a source of support–until Maya became a mother herself. Then, the parent who had once been so capable and attentive turned unavailable and distant. Struggling to understand this abrupt change while raising her own young child, Maya searches for answers and soon learns that her mother is living with Alzheimer’s
When Maya steps in to care for her, she comes to realize that despite their closeness, she never really knew her mother. Were her cherished stories–about life in India, about what it means to be an immigrant, about motherhood itself–even true? Affecting, raw, and poetic, What We Carry is the story of a daughter and her mother, of lies and truths, of receiving and giving care–and how we cannot grow up until we fully understand the people who raised us.
Maya Shanbhag Lang is the author of What We Carry: A Memoir, (Random House, April 2020), a New York Times Editor’s Pick and one Amazon’s Best Books of 2020. She is also the author of The Sixteenth of June (Scribner), long listed for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize and a Finalist for the Audie Awards for Best Audio Book. She has been featured in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, In Style, and others.
Winner the 2017 Neil Shepard Prize in Fiction and the 2012 Rona Jaffe Foundation-Bread Loaf Scholarship in Fiction, she was a Finalist for Glimmer Train’s Short Story Award for New Writers.
The daughter of Indian immigrants, she lives outside of New York City with her daughter. Visit her website at www.mayalang.com
The Missing Peace
The Missing Peace is a series of beautifully illustrated ‘talking head’ style monolgues, stories of survival and thought-provoking chapters to highlight how people have survived and even thrived using their unique, bespoke survival kits after a loved one has died.It is a not a book about death-it is a book about LIFE & being the friend you would love to have.It looks at death and loss from a number of different viewpoints challenging the reader on every page.It won’t tell you what to do. It will allow you to see how others are traversing grief throwing ideas up into the air. YOU read the stories & YOU decide if the ideas fit you.The book isn’t a magic wand & it won’t kiss it better but it may just help you realise that it’s not just YOU & together others can help.It will make you smile in places. It will make you cry but it will make you think.The Missing Peace could be the icebreaker you need when you don’t want to talk.This book will get people talking but more importantly LISTENING.
Big Ian is a unique entertaining and dynamic keynote speaker with a diverse range of skills and experience. Imagine the energy of stand up comedy with a heartfelt message.
Winner of Care Trainer of the Year at The British Care Awards and accomplished presenter who is able to convey motivational, inspiring & emotive messages through his presentations & film making.
Author of A POCKETFUL OF KINDNESS, DEAR DEMENTIA & THE MISSING PEACE.
Passionate fundraiser leading a campaign for older people in York; founder of ‘Xmas Presence’, ‘A Night to Remember’ and ‘All Together Now Festival’
www.bigian.co.uk
Finding the Light in Dementia
Want to reconnect with your loved one living with dementia? Learn what to say & do from a Dementia Nurse Specialist & care with confidence.
‘Finding the Light in Dementia: A Guide for Families, Friends & Caregivers’ is the essential self-help book that helps you know what to say and do when caring for your loved one/care partner
Providing chapters on:
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• What to do following a diagnosis
• Positive ways of communicating together
• Using life stories & activities to stimulate memories & communication
• How to be content & safe at home
• Tips for sleeping, eating & drinking
• How to provide personal care without resistance
• How to respond to changes in moods & behaviour
• Learn how to avoid distress
• Caring for yourself as caregiver
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It offers valuable approaches, tips & suggestions interspersed with caregiver stories that help the reader learn to care for & stay connected with their care partner.
Whether you’re a spouse, partner, daughter, son, sibling, friend, parent, paid caregiver, or health & social care professional, this book is for you.
By helping you understand what your care partner is experiencing you will learn:
• What to say & do during difficult & challenging moments
• How to communicate & reconnect with them
• How making subtle changes to your home can help
• Learn how to overcome the challenges of changing moods & behavior
• How to reduce the effects of hallucinations, delusions & fixed beliefs
Finding the Light in Dementia also provides:
★ Advice when considering professional care at home & in residential care
★ Short chapters with easy-to-read font & summaries for quick reference
★ Notes pages to write down any points you would like to make
★ Question sheets for you to refer to when speaking with your doctor and/or legal      professionals
★ You can make this your personal guide
When following the approaches in this book, you should find that your care partner will feel more understood & you will become calmer thereby helping you both find a sense of connection & continue to live well.
Dr. Jane M. Mullins is a Dementia Nurse Specialist who has devoted over 30 years to the practice & study of dementia care.
She has uncovered certain common features that help caregivers & the people they care for find better ways of coping.
Her practice experience is backed up by expert knowledge while studying for her PhD; A Suitcase of Memories. Her passions include finding ways to communicate with people who have dementia through music, art & nature as a way to helping them feel well and valued.
Through listening to & supporting people & their families during & following their diagnosis in memory clinics, caring for people who have dementia in hospital & in care homes, she has helped people throughout all of the stages of their condition.
When managing a Care Home, she has supported their transition from home to residential care using life stories as a guide to planning their life & care throughout their remaining years.
This has included supporting their partners, families & friends.
Jane is currently embarking on a very exciting project: she is developing her Finding the Light in Dementia Training programme for health and social care staff. This training will be affordable for all care providers across the world and includes accredited dementia care training, a care staff wellbeing hub, full of lovely relaxing and informative resources to help staff stay well, supported and resilient while in their caring roles with monthly Q and A zoom sessions that will provide up to date talks on all aspects of dementia with Jane, other professionals, researchers, people living with dementia and families. As well as this her onlne platform will provide engaging resources for people affected by the condition, their families and friends. Watch This Space!! and if your keen to support you can go to www.crowdfunder.co.uk/findingthelightindementiacare to help her get this off the ground
Please consider writing a review for Finding the Light in Dementia, a Guide for Families, Friends and Caregivers to help other people affected by the condition
Want to reconnect with your loved one living with dementia? Learn what to say & do from a Dementia Nurse Specialist & care with confidence.
‘Finding the Light in Dementia: A Guide for Families, Friends & Caregivers’ is the essential self-help book that helps you know what to say and do when caring for your loved one/care partner
Providing chapters on:
Â
• What to do following a diagnosis
• Positive ways of communicating together
• Using life stories & activities to stimulate memories & communication
• How to be content & safe at home
• Tips for sleeping, eating & drinking
• How to provide personal care without resistance
• How to respond to changes in moods & behaviour
• Learn how to avoid distress
• Caring for yourself as caregiver
Â
It offers valuable approaches, tips & suggestions interspersed with caregiver stories that help the reader learn to care for & stay connected with their care partner.
Whether you’re a spouse, partner, daughter, son, sibling, friend, parent, paid caregiver, or health & social care professional, this book is for you.
By helping you understand what your care partner is experiencing you will learn:
• What to say & do during difficult & challenging moments
• How to communicate & reconnect with them
• How making subtle changes to your home can help
• Learn how to overcome the challenges of changing moods & behavior
• How to reduce the effects of hallucinations, delusions & fixed beliefs
Finding the Light in Dementia also provides:
★ Advice when considering professional care at home & in residential care
★ Short chapters with easy-to-read font & summaries for quick reference
★ Notes pages to write down any points you would like to make
★ Question sheets for you to refer to when speaking with your doctor and/or legal      professionals
★ You can make this your personal guide
When following the approaches in this book, you should find that your care partner will feel more understood & you will become calmer thereby helping you both find a sense of connection & continue to live well.
The Book About Getting Older
Now more than ever, we need to talk about getting older.
Many of us are living to a very great age. But how do we give those we love, and eventually ourselves, long lives that are as happy and healthy as possible?
Dr Lucy’s book gives us answers to the questions we can voice – and those that we can’t.
A long life should be embraced and celebrated, but it’s not all easy. Yet even the most challenging situation can be helped by the right conversation.
How do we start?
* How do we ask whether it’s worth taking seven different medicines?
* Is it normal to find you’re falling out of love with someone, as they disappear into dementia?
* Should Dad be driving, and if not, who can stop him?
* What are the secrets of the best care homes?
* When does fierce independence become bad behaviour?
* How do you navigate near-impossible discussions around resuscitation and intensity of treatments?
* And who decides what happens when we become ill?
Reminiscence and Life Story Work
Reminiscence is a valuable tool for the professional carer as well as those who are looking after a family member or friend. It enhances and enriches the care relationship, and benefits both the person being cared for and the carer.
This fully-updated fourth edition is full of practical information on planning and running successful reminiscence work. It will enable carers and health and social care practitioners to develop the attitude, knowledge, understanding, values and skills they need to use reminiscence with people of all ages, either individually or in groups, and in residential or community settings. Topics covered include reminiscence with individuals and couples, inter-generational reminiscence, reminiscence with individuals from minority ethnic groups and reminiscence with people with sensory and learning disabilities, dementia, depression and terminal illness.
This book is the ideal starting point for any professional taking up reminiscence work, as well as for those who wish to deepen their knowledge and increase their ability to help those they care for in less formal ways
Faith Gibson OBE is Emeritus Professor of Social Work at the University of Ulster, Northern Ireland. She trained as a social worker and teacher in the Universities of Sydney, Queensland and Chicago, and has had wide experience as a social work practitioner, teacher and researcher. Faith is President of the Northern Ireland Reminiscence Network, and has been awarded a Dementia Care Award from the University of Sterling, a Millennium Medal from the British Geriatrics Society and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Northern Ireland Association of Social Workers.
What I Wish People Knew About Dementia
What can a diseased brain tell us about being human, living our own lives better and helping those with dementia get the best from theirs?
When Wendy Mitchell was diagnosed with young-onset dementia at the age of fifty-eight, her brain was overwhelmed with images of the last stages of the disease Рthose familiar tropes, shortcuts and clich̩s that we are fed by the media, or even our own health professionals.
But her diagnosis far from represented the end of her life. Instead, it was the start of a very different one.
Wise, practical and life affirming, What I Wish People Knew About Dementia combines anecdotes, research and Wendy Mitchell’s own brilliant wit and wisdom to tell readers exactly what she wishes they knew about dementia.
Wendy Mitchell spent twenty years as a non-clinical team leader in the NHS before being diagnosed with Young Onset Dementia in July 2014 at the age of fifty-eight. Shocked by the lack of awareness about the disease, both in the community and in hospitals, she vowed to spend her time raising awareness about dementia and encouraging others to see there is life after a diagnosis. She is now an ambassador for the Alzheimer’s Society. She has two daughters and lives in Yorkshire.
Downs Children: The Story of Roland
email roland.leosun@outlook.com to order your copy
BuyThis is not only a ‘how-to’ guide for parenting a Downs child. It explores the impact of ageing and illness on parents and carers as well, and the support available from local authorities and the NHS both for Downs people and those who care for them. If, as a parent, you continue caring until you are elderly, your health may begin to fail whilst you are ‘in harness’. You will then come up against the discrepancies between governmental and NHS provision for congenitally disabled adults versus that for the mainstream elderly. In brief, Downs children and others ‘statemented’ as having substantial special needs are entitled to special education and potentially lifetime care at the expense of the local authority, whereas pensioners who were born healthy are generally expected to self-fund their care as geriatrics. The increasing incidence of dementia in the UK’s ageing population, and attempts to manage it, make this a very topical issue.
My hope is that Roland’s story will inform and encourage parents and carers for children and adults who share his condition. I well remember, in the aftermath of Roland’s birth, how helpful it was not only to learn that organizations like the Down’s Syndrome Association and satellite groups existed, but also to read the factual yet very human accounts of their life experiences written by other parents in this situation.
Writing this book in my early seventies, I am looking back on 44 years of caring for my son Roland who has Down’s Syndrome. Sadly, severe dementia prevents my wife Pat from contributing to the book – though she was devoted to Roland’s care until overtaken by illness.
