The Reitman Centre at Mt Sinai Hospital

I shall have to be very quick with this as internet cafe shutting in five minutes..you will be relieved no doubt!

So, got there at 9am yesterday on my bike ( in the wet) and went straight into an informal meeting with about eight staff round a table. I was welcomed by the team and the centre director called Joel. I had a quite wonderful morning learning about what they do at the centre which is essentially to provide on-going emotional, psychological and physical help/support for care-givers of people with dementia. I was really impressed with what the team is doing and in a nutshell learnt that the we in the UK can do a lot more by way of supporting care-givers. They also use techniques including role-play to enable care-givers to identify problems they may be having and then help them develop ways of overcoming these obstacles to live a life as full and as rich as possible. The team came across as being very skilled at what they do. I was also very fortunate that morning to meet the Psychiatrist-in-Chief ( Molyn) for the whole of the city and he is coming to my experiential workshop next week. We had a fascinating talk and for 45 mins when I thought it was only going to be for 15! I realised in meeting members of the team that they are very interested in using and developing more creative approaches in their work, including the use of movement and dance and music and song etc. This is what I have come for...to find ways I can spread the use of movement, dance & embodied practices.

The afternoon I spent in a great cafe with Stephen Katz, an inspiring sociologist, gerontologist and ( in my words) a radical thinker. Topics ranged from arts and dementia, to embodiment and the ageing body, to falls and falling and to the nature of dementia not being seen as a disease at all...more a condition and perhaps a natural part of the ageing process. All sorts of folk were mentioned, all sorts of ideas, which I won't bore you with. This was the first of what will be many other opportunities to dialogue. Of that I'm sure....that's is ...time to go.