The dementia kit
From custom cutlery to a GPS tracker, range of special products to help families deal with disease
HOMEWARE that makes life easier for dementia sufferers and their carers is being sold on the high street for the first time.
A chain of chemists is set to stock clocks, crockery and gadgets tailormade to help those with confusion and memory difficulties.
They include a clock which gives the date, year and time but, for later stages of the disease, can be adapted to simply state: ‘Now it’s Saturday morning.’
A smart gadget placed around mugs will blink brightly to remind elderly people living alone they have forgotten to drink, as dehydration is a leading cause of hospital admissions for those with conditions such as Alzheimer’s. The range also includes telephones with photographs rather than numbers to identify who someone may want to call.
They can also now get crockery designed to be spill-proof and keep food
‘We had to find our own solutions’
warm, and a simple music player using just two controls.
The 14 Unforgettable products – available in 59 Lloyds Pharmacy stores – were devised by 36-year-old James Ashwell, who cared for his mother over five years before her death from dementia.
He said: ‘When someone has a child, there are so many books and whole aisles of products people can buy. When a family member has dementia, they are increasingly dependent on you but there is nothing for them. In my mum’s case, we had to find our own solutions, getting chef’s gloves from a factory in Northampton so that she could not burn herself cooking, or children’s jigsaw puzzles when she found them harder to do.’
Mr Ashwell’s mother was diagnosed with early-onset dementia at just 57 and, after his father died when he was 25, he and his brother became her carer.
After her death in 2011, he tried to find solutions for people like him, including a magnetic-fastening blouse after he found himself sewing the buttons back on to his mother’s every night when she ripped hers off to go to bed.
A GPS tracker that can be placed in the sole of a shoe allows family members to make sure their relative has not got lost wandering away from home.
Cormac Tobin, of Lloyds Pharmacy’s parent firm Celesio UK, said: ‘When I heard James’s story about his mother and he told me about this firm belief that there is plenty of life still to be lived for those with dementia, I just knew we had to get involved.’