Picture Cards Help Families Chat to Elderly and those with Dementia

By Melanie Reed, Times Online

May 16, 2009

United Kingdom

The simplest of inventions, dreamt up at a kitchen table, is helping to transform communication between elderly people and their carers and families.

Sets of large cards, carrying pictures of well-known scenes and objects from the 1940s, are being used to stimulate old people and those with dementia and to support conversations between the generations.

“Reminiscence tea parties” are being organised at which the cards are used as a tool to draw the elderly out of their shells and to get them talking about their lives — and carers are reporting increased wellbeing as a result.

In the six months since the cards were launched they have sold out two print runs and have been eagerly adopted by volunteers and in care homes across the UK. Another series of cards, featuring the 1950s, is to be launched within the next month.

The cards are the brainchild of Sarah Reed, a trustee with the charity Contact the Elderly. Through her volunteering, she saw carers and families struggling to find things to talk about with the elderly or those with dementia.

“My mother has dementia, and I understood how difficult it could be to make conversation with her. But also, through my work with Contact the Elderly, we saw younger people in particular who clearly wanted to have a relationship with older people but didn’t know where to begin.

“Even with families, it’s difficult. People go into care homes to visit loved ones but don’t know how to start a conversation. They struggle to get going.

“The cards give everyone somewhere to go: they allow old people to tell their life stories, which is what the young people want to hear, and has great therapeutic value for the elderly.These people are sidelined from society and yet if you get them going they come back to life.”

Ms Reed, 60, who lives in London, set up a one-woman company called Many Happy Returns late last year and has been astonished at the demand, selling several thousand sets of cards.

Karen Moore, 30, a volunteer worker with the elderly in Paisley, Renfrewshire, is using the cards to organise reminiscence parties. After one such gathering at the volunteer organisation Alzheimer Scotland, she told The Times: “You could see the sparkle in their eyes when they were reminiscing. It makes our job easier, because it fills in the awkward silences.

“I see a lot of loneliness and isolation — old people feel invisible. There’s lots of research showing that talking about the past makes the elderly feel worthwhile and gives their lives meaning.”

Fiona Moncur, the manager of Strachan House Care Home in Edinburgh, said: “Some of the residents who would normally give one-word answers told us about their first bike, what colour it was, what make it was. The cards helped bring people out of their shells.”

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