The Flanders Centre of Expertise on Dementia – our mission and main projects
The Flanders Centre of Expertise on Dementia and the regional centres of expertise are based on a person-centered care vision with respect for individuals’ life stories, needs and preferences. We do this by sharing useful knowledge with people throughout the health and welfare sector: informal caregivers, volunteers, healthcare professionals, researchers and people with dementia. This knowledge is inspired by literature and best practices, preferably using a bottom-up approach.
We focus on today’s individuals with dementia with their needs and abilities. This also means that we constantly keep our eye on the quality of life of people with dementia. We love clear simplicity, so that the people caring for a person with dementia are optimally informed of the current developments in science, care and support. That is why we like to look ahead and we want to be a leader in our field in Flanders. We want to stimulate debate on how to organize care and support to improve the daily lives of vulnerable people. And every now and then, we dream that dementia will be treatable one day, that each person will experience his or her care as excellent. Meanwhile, we try to build on a better quality of life for people with dementia and their families today. We hope to meet you during our journey!
For more information on the mission and main projects of the The Flanders Centre of Expertise on Dementia, check out our international presentation folder or follow us on Twitter and YouTube where we have also information available in English.
As an organization we contribute regularly to international publications and events, like the report of Alzheimer’s Disease International on stigma and the Alzheimer Europe Conference of 2019 recently and we are also involved in international networks as INTERDEM and WYLD (World Young Leaders in Dementia). The Flanders Centre of Expertise on Dementia was and is active in European Projects like Innovate Dementia, CASCADE and the brandnew project ‘Dementia in Cultural Mediation‘ (website online later in 2020).
The last years the focus of our work was situated around topics as:
- Awareness raising, with the campaign ‘Forget dementia, remember the person’
- Prevention, with the campaign SaniMemorix
- Young-onset dementia, with the start of Brain Adventure Team
- Advocacy, with the start of the first-ever ‘Working group of people with dementia’ in Flanders
- Quality of care, with the launch of the reference framework for quality of life, housing and care for people with dementia: Based on scientific research and together with many care facilities, carers and people with dementia, we studied the question ‘What is quality of life, housing and care for people with dementia?’ and created six foundations of good care that guide care organisations. Interested in the free English summary? Click here: You and me together we are human.
- After publishing the reference framework for quality of life, housing and care for people with dementia, the Flanders Centre of Expertise on Dementia provided one year of coaching for six organizations. Two nursing homes, two hospitals and two intersectoral projects worked on person-centred care. You can check out the first results on our YouTube-channel through the playlist ‘reference framework dementia’.
During the COVID-19 pandemic the Flanders Centre of Expertise on Dementia provides as much as possible resources to support community and institutional long-term care responses to the challenges in Flanders. In december 2020 our advice on the vaccination strategy was published for the international audience here.
The COVID-19 pandemic also affected the implementation of the project CASCADE and challenged all project partners to continue the best possible support for people with dementia. The document ‘Continuity in Person-Centred Dementia Care during a Pandemic. A Guide to applying CASCADE Ways of Working’ stems from the shared commitment of all partners to learn from each other, to see what works and to share good practices in dementia care in the Interreg Europe regions and all other EU countries. Each country may have responded differently to the pandemic but our experiences during this time are common. We aimed to produce a rich and pan-European document with authentic experiences, concrete tools and a clear vision supported and developed by CASCADE project partners. You can download the booklet here.
In 2018 and 2019, the Flanders Centre of Expertise on Dementia campaigned to raise awareness of the link between lifestyle and risk of dementia. Following the in 2020 published article ‘Putting primary prevention of dementia on everybody’s agenda‘, the scientific journal ‘Preventive Medicine’ published an article about the impact research of the campaign. You can download the full article here.
If you’re looking for specific information in English on our projects, feel free to get in touch: olivier.constant@dementie.be.