Music & Memory helps care organisations and carers at home support people living with dementia and other cognitive impairments. We help by training carers to discover, capture and use personalised music in a therapeutic way that enhances quality of life. Regular personally meaningful music enables people living with dementia to experience joy in their daily lives, connect with themselves and those around them, and become less reliant on anti-psychotic, anti-anxiety, and antidepressant medications. This video shows the impact on Henry - normally very withdrawn with little communication. You can see more videos on the Music & Memory YouTube Channel.
We are working to achieve this vision through the following core efforts:
Train and Support Caregivers
Bridge the Generations
Advocate
Educate
Our primary activity is to train and support carers. We do this through training and certificating are teams within care organisations. Our training is delivered via webinars and live Q&As - allowing us to scale rapidly to over 5,000 care organisation in the US and worldwide. Our training has been developed over 8 years and includes the ongoing support of the 'Care Community'.
Our Student Program educates and trains young people to contribute to Music & Memory programs established in care homes. The students make a valuable contribution and learn a range of skills. Most importantly they have an increased awareness of dementia and how personalised music can provide vital support.
We educate through research projects, creating school curricula, sharing our learning and other learning. For example one of our research projects has demonstrated a statistically significant impact of Music & Memory in reducing the use of antipsychotic medications as well as behavioural and psychological symptoms of dementia.
Our advocacy includes our presence in the media, at conferences and our works with local and national government. We also work with the music industry and have several PSAs include this one from Elvis Costello.