What is the Purpose of Memory Care?

I need to be clear I am not being flippant.

I am not meaning, Who cares? What’s the point?

I am meaning what is memory care for?

It might sound obvious. Memory care is to support people who need…..

Care for their memory?

That doesn’t seem quite right. How would we care for memory?

Is the purpose of memory care to support people because they have memory challenges?

Would this mean that memory challenges themselves result in people needing care? I suppose this is at least partly true. A person with memory challenges might forget that they ate, or to eat. So, memory care might ensure that a person eats or drinks.

But is that the main purpose of memory care – to help people do things that they forget to do?

Seems more than that.

When we are talking about memory care, we are really talking about people living with dementia. So, we need to also keep in mind that dementia includes much more than challenges with memory. Dementia includes challenges with attention, executive function, visuospatial abilities, language, social cognition.  For each person this is different, but the experience of living with dementia always includes more than challenges with memory. Also, memory is complicated – there are many types of memory, and ways of “remembering”. People living with dementia do not completely lose all memory.

People living with dementia may have challenges with a variety of things on a daily basis. Maybe a person has challenges with dressing. But I am not sure this is because they simply have forgotten how to dress. It is more complicated than that. A person may have challenges with planning, so it might be difficult for them to organize their day. This could look like confusion about where they are supposed to be or what they are supposed to do. But I am again not sure this is entirely related to memory.

So, memory care can’t just be about care for memory.

The term “memory care” may not be accurate then, because people living with dementia need support for more than their memory.

We also need to consider that the term “memory care” puts a major focus on a person’s “impairment” or “problem”. It would be like if a person with diabetes went to receive care from a place called “Frequent Urination Center”. 

The term “memory care” seems to focus on the challenge a person is having, rather than the bigger picture of what a person might want from care and support….and life. It is deficit-focused, rather than possibility-focused.

The term “memory care” might encourage us to to see the symptom or the medical condition as the major focus, not the person.

So, is this what memory care is for? To focus on the medical condition of dementia?

If the purpose of memory care is to focus on the medical conditions of dementia, and the challenges they bring, it could look like a few different things.

It might look like a place where the medical condition of dementia is treated medically. With medications, primarily.

It might also look like a place where people living there are engaged in forms of rehabilitation to support their memory and other cognitive challenges that are a result of their medical condition. Or, maybe the environment is built to support what people with dementia CAN do. This purpose of memory care seems to be somewhat enabling.

But is this really the purpose of memory care?

Even if it were, should memory care be more than a focus on a medical condition?

Couldn’t it be a focus on the whole person?

So maybe instead of “memory care”, it might be “person care” or “person support”.

Yet, it doesn’t seem like the true purpose of memory care, as it stands now, is to focus on the whole person, more than their dementia.

I worry that the purpose of memory care might be more “keeping people from doing things we don’t want them to do” rather than “supporting people to do things that are important to them”.

I worry that memory care is primarily focused around safety.

There is nothing wrong with safety. We want people to be safe. But is safety the purpose of memory care?

Safety should be a component of memory care. You might even say that safety could be an enabling condition of supporting people with dementia to live their lives.

If the main purpose of memory care is safety, we are dismissing the many other human needs of people living with dementia.

Shouldn’t these needs come first? Shouldn’t they be the purpose of memory person care?

Could the purpose of memory person care be to live a life that is important to a person living with dementia?

Could the purpose of memory person care be to create a community where people living with dementia are supported to do things that are meaningful to them?

Could the purpose of memory person care be to create an infrastructure where people living with dementia feel they matter?

In order for these purposes to be actualized, a person living with dementia would still need support to ensure they are eating, drinking, getting dressed, using the bathroom. To live a life of purpose, a person living with dementia would likely need the enabling condition of safety. (We all do.)

If we know that safety is not the purpose of memory person care, maybe we also would think about it differently. It is not the only, true goal, so maybe we would have more comfort with the dignity of risk, the reality that we all make decisions sometimes that are not “good”. Maybe if we did not see safety as the main purpose of memory person care, we would be more open to negotiating risk so that it serves bigger purposes than safety itself.  We might approach risk with the understanding of a higher purpose of LIVING.

Maybe the purpose of memory person care might still include ways of supporting the cognitive changes of dementia, more than “memory loss”, and in a way that serves how people want to live.

Our model of memory care has been around for some time. I am not sure we have adequately questioned what it is and whether it is working. This is not fair to people living with dementia, and those who care for them. This is the option people have when they need support, and it is simply not what it could be.

I think it is time that we ask ourselves this question. And think about it deeply.

What could the purpose of memory care be?