Mr John Killick - Playfulness and Dementia: A Practice Guide

This book is in part an act of atonement for a misjudgement. In 1997, Tessa Perrin published an article in The Journal of Dementia Care entitled The puzzling, provocative question of play. I was provoked, and wrote a letter that was published in the magazine. In it I completely dismissed her thesis that play is essential to well-being and stated:

Advocating play with people with dementia is splashing around in the shallows and ignoring the deep water that stretches to the far horizon.

In the years since I have come to completely revise this opinion and now maintain that playfulness has much to contribute to the mental and physical health of those with the condition.

This is a judgement I have come to partly through my own experience, but also from encounters with others: people with dementia, family carers and professionals, some of whom are represented in these pages. The book is in two parts. The first part is made up of chapters on the nature of play and what it has to offer people with dementia, and accounts of various practices that have proved innovative and successful. There is also a chapter contributed by Sarah Zoutewelle-Morris on the playful approach to art and craft activities. The second part consists of five accounts of playfulness in practice two from people with the diagnosis, two by family carers who have gone on to volunteer to work with people with the condition, and one from an actor who has a decades experience of creative approaches using humour; some of these come from edited interviews. I am very grateful to all these contributors, and also to Claire Craig, whose reflections form an important part of Chapter 2. I am also deeply indebted to the German photographer Michael Ullmann for allowing me to include pictures from his wonderful collection on humour and dementia.

It will have become obvious that this is not a book of argument but rather a collection of first-hand accounts and anecdotes, which, taken together, present a working portrait of an important and neglected aspect of dementia. To find those arguments expounded in exemplary fashion, one must turn to Chapter 5 of a book called Wellbeing in Dementia: An Occupational Approach by Tessa Perrin and Hazel May, published in 2000. This, so far as I am aware, is the only serious consideration of the theoretical approach to this subject yet attempted. My endorsement does not extend to the development of Piagets theory of child development applied in reverse to people with dementia that this piece of writing also contains, but otherwise I am happy for my book to be regarded as a practical series of illustrations of what is involved in bringing humour into peoples lives. I have tried to avoid giving instructions of any kind but to let the stories speak for themselves; in this way, I hope that a new generation of playful practitioners will be inspired to take this approach further.