Jennifer Casson is Occupational Therapist (OT) in the ‘Advanced Dementia Support Team’ within the End of Life Partnership, Cheshire. She started working around the time Tom Kitwood published ‘Dementia Reconsidered’, which is now of course a seminal text for how we care well for people with dementia. Jenny spent 10 years working clinically as a mental health OT then transitioned into a lectureship at University of Liverpool, School of Health Sciences for a further decade before discovering this current role.

The Advanced Dementia Team is a (small) multi-disciplinary team providing education, facilitation and advice to health and social care professionals working with people living with advanced dementia. We are underpinned by an appreciation of Tom Kitwood’s enriched model and ideas, practical approaches pioneered by Teepa Snow, and a palliative approach to dementia care. We promote advanced care planning in dementia, and support staff in the use of the Mental Capacity Act (2005). Symptom management is a core aspect of our work. Very often, we will be focussing on communication with people with dementia or on the use of non-pharmacological interventions to understand and support distress in people living with dementia.