How exciting! A five-star review of What Are You Doing Here? Reflections on Dementia on Goodreads.

I wanted to add a widget to this blog showing Goodreads reviews, but I can’t seem to do it on a WordPress blog.

Instead, I’ll quote the final paragraph of the review here:

‘I can’t help but feel the world would be a better place if ‘What Are You Doing Here?’ was recommended reading for anybody either working with dementia sufferers or responsible for making policies that affect their lives.’

Of course, I agree! There is a lot in the book about my mother’s experiences in residential care and in hospital—some of it good, some of it not. I discovered how easily people with dementia can fall through the cracks. They get overlooked, and sometimes ignored. Assumptions are made, reactions to confusion and stress are labelled as challenging behaviour and no one has the time to listen and reassure. There are some amazing people who work in dementia care and treat the people they care for as people, but we need more of them. And we need policymakers who realise there are people behind the statistics.