1. The Extending Empathy Group & Role Play
Role Play -Refreshing the parts that other training cannot reach?
Judith Farmer, Mary Aldridge, Lisa Breame, Cressida Hammerton from Norfolk UK

2. Research & Reflection 2005-2009
The Extending Empathy Group inspired by ?
Wanting to establish further person-centred learning for dementia care mappers
Recognising that dramatic representations of dementia can deepen understanding of the experience of dementia (role plays on the Learning to use DCM course, films, personal narratives)
Wanting to experiment with different learning approaches
Qualitative research project as part MSc studies
Working together as a group since 2005
9th workshop in 2009

3. Firstly a little about Dementia Care Mapping (DCM)
Established & popular method of direct observation of people with dementia
Designed to capture how life is for a person with dementia
from the perspective of the individual
Mappers learn how to use the tool and how to apply the process of DCM within care settings to inform care practice (Brooker & Surr 2005)
A 4-day intensive training course

4. Role Play? What do we mean?
Adopting the role of a person with dementia
Trying out a ‘slice’ of that person’s day in role
To experience how it might feel to be that person
Acting ‘as-if’ the person

5. “What does role play bring to your practice?”
As participants struggled to describe the high impact of role play to their practice their language became full of metaphors and similes
“Its about my little journey really”
“Really brings it home to you”
“You have to be quite random and creative ..to connect to people”
“Its like cutting through the white noise, isn’t it?”
“This has huge consequences for me personally…its about keeping me enthusiastic”

6. Some concluding thoughts?
Role play may help to shift our ‘dementia perspective’ from clinical pathologising & intellectual knowledge towards…..
a stance of empathy and compassion
Resisting the ‘tourist’ practitioner role (passive & compliant)
Gives hope to practitioners about the experience of dementia & reinforcing the therapeutic value of skilled intervention
Supporting dementia therapists to ‘swim against the tide’
Working as ‘mediator’ not busybody - (Anna Dartington)
To be as brave in our practice as we are in role

7. Quotes from people with dementia
“Yes, that is not some awful thing in the middle of the wood, which it could feel, but actually you can bring out some diamonds too”
Anna Dartington.
Interviewed by Rebekah Pratt 2007: 284
“We need to find the pearl within us. Like the pearl that is formed through the irritation of a grain of sand within an oyster, our pearl has formed through the challenge of living with dementia.”
“I believe that people with dementia are making an important journey from cognition , through emotion, into spirit”. Christine Bryden 2005