Personal Care through Task Breakdown
Overview
Task breakdown is the process of helping a patient or loved one to accomplish an activity one step at a time. A person suffering from dementia is often incapable of remembering a series of instructions. Task breakdown helps your loved one to make sense of various activities of daily living, including: brush your teeth,” “get dressed,” and “eat your dinner.” Tasks can be broken down by walking a person step-by-step through an activity or, depending on the person's ability, providing him or her with a list that breaks the task down. It is most important that activities be broken down according to each person's ability and understanding.
The video actually takes us inside the homes of caregivers who are caring for their loved ones with dementia. Through the caregivers’ approaches, we are able to get a sense of how to breakdown a caregiving situation and adapt it to the caregiving relationship. The video can be stopped and restarted at any point in its play.
Video (click a button to launch video in new window)
This video is approxmiately 3 minutes long.
Start Small Video
(for dial-up users)
Start Large Video
(for high-speed users)
Text Information
Text Information on Managing Dementia-Related Behavior
This information is taken from "Managing Dementia-Related Behavior," which appeared in the November/December 2005 edition of Chicago CAREgiver, a magazine written for caregivers. For more information on Chicago CAREgiver, please visit www.chicagocaregiver.com.
Other Resources
Visit the Communication Techniques for Alzheimer's and Related Disorders and Communicating with Family, Friends, and Older Adults sections of the Resources page for additional information.
Contact the geriatric care specialist with your questions and comments regarding the Task Breakdown Module by emailing CAREgivinghelp@cje.net or by calling 773.381.6008.
It is important to remember the geriatric care specialist may not be able to respond immediately to your message. It may take two to three days before receiving a response.
Many questions submitted to the geriatric care specialist via email or voicemail message will be posted and responded to through the CAREgivinghelp message board. If you do not want your question and its response posted on the message board, please make your wish clear in your email or voicemail message to the geriatric care specialist.
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