She manages home caring for people with dementia

For most people, the idea of working full time with dementia sufferers will seem daunting, to say the least.

Rebekah Smith made a conscious decision to work in the field. As an experienced nurse and manager, the whole world of healthcare was open to her. She chose dementia.

“This is what I knew I wanted to do,” she says.

Rebekah, 46, is general manager at Admiral Court in Leigh, team leading 96 staff. The care home, run by the prize-winning Hallmark company, opened last year, specialising in residents with dementia issues.

In dealing with these people and their families, Rebekah brings not just professional skills, but direct personal insights. “My own family has experienced dementia, and my partner’s mother is quite far advanced with it,” she says.

“So I do appreciate first-hand what those with dementia, and also, don’t forget, their loved ones, are going through.”

Another aspect of dementia work also appealed to Rebekah. It is a fast developing field.

“There have been big and very positive advances in recent years,” she says. When she first started to consider it as a speciality, she was pleasantly surprised by what she found.

“It was enlightening to see what a rewarding working environment it provided,” she says.

The new approach to dementia rejects a lot of the old, negative, crisis management approach.

Rebekah says: “Now it is about assisting people to live their lives, based on what they did in their life before. We have people here who ran their own companies, who were skilled artists. There is a lady who can still do the splits, and a farm worker whose body clock is still set to getting up at four in the morning.

“You have to treat each of these very different people individually. You can’t just plant people like these in front of the TV all day.

“A lot of the negative behaviour associated with those experiencing dementia actually comes about from boredom, and being under-stretched. Behind that dementia, there is still a person.”

The programmes at Admiral Court place major emphasis on areas such as music, exercise and craft. Every resident has his or her own bespoke programme.

Rebekah’s own working day involves hands on work as well as the usual management responsibilities. She started her nurse’s training straight out of school, at 18. She worked, among other areas, in occupational health and nursing recruitment.

A stint in homecare convinced her this was where her future lay, and she added a diploma in dementia care to her qualifications.

In recruiting staff, the home has what Rebekah calls “a very robust selection process”.

She says: “Our staff come from a range of different backgrounds. We have colleagues here who have worked in Adventure Island, McDonald’s, and the building trade. But it’s not their previous experience that counts so much as what they bring to this job, qualities like warmth, kindness and enthusiasm.”

Her basic tip to anyone applying for the job is simply “be yourself”. She adds: “If that means showing emotion, then that’s no bad thing. We’ve all been taught to hold back our emotions. Perhaps we should all let them out more.”