Care home residents learning French to help tackle dementia

Residents in a Perthshire care home are learning French to help tackle dementia.

Balhousie Ruthven Towers Care Home in Auchterarder has been working with social enterprise organisation Lingo Flamingo to offer language lessons in a bid to help delay the symptoms of dementia.

It is believed speaking multiple languages can delay the onset of the condition by up to five years, and the tailored sessions help residents with early forms of dementia to improve communication, cognitive development and interpersonal skills, as well as build their confidence.

Residents at the care home have just finished a 10-week French-language workshop, where they took part in a range of activities, including music sessions, word association and learned memory techniques.

Home manager Jozi Stables said: “Lingo Flamingo’s foreignlanguage workshops have proved very popular with our residents and the benefits have been amazing to see.

“Residents that were quite disengaged at the beginning, became fully engaged by the end of the 10 weeks.

“We have residents that are counting in French and even singing the French national anthem.

“It is fantastic to see how they respond to the activities and the enjoyment they get out of it.”

With 7.7 million people worldwide diagnosed with dementia each year, projects such as this can prove vital to delaying the symptoms of the condition.

Yvonne Manson, Balhousie Care Group dementia consultant, said the classes were not designed to make the group fluent in French, but aimed at engaging their brains.