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Making a Referral to First Link
First Link Referral Form
Benefits of a First Link Referral
Connecting to the right supports early in the dementia journey, can make a big difference in the quality of life for both the person with dementia and the care partner. First Link® connects individuals and families to:
Learning:
Dementia education programs offering information about diagnosis and disease progression, day-to-day living, positive approaches to care, strategies for responding to challenges and how to prepare for the future.
Services:
Alzheimer Society programs and services, information about other community and health services.
Support:
Support groups and individual support.
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Watch this short video to hear from Christene Gordon, Provincial Lead, Client Services, about how the First Link program can help with the dementia journey.
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Watch this short, animated video about the First Link referral program and how it opens the door to counselling and support programs.
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Benefits of a First Link Referral
First Link Brochure
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Our vision is a world without Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias.
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The Alzheimer Society of Alberta and Northwest Territories brings awareness to Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias; helps alleviate the personal and social consequences of the disease; provides information, education and support programs; and promotes and funds research into the cause, prevention and cure.
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The Alzheimer Society of Alberta and Northwest Territories has locations in the following communities:
" Yellowknife
" Fort McMurray
" Grande Prairie
" Edmonton
" Red Deer
" Lethbridge
" Medicine Hat
In this session you will learn more about the Alzheimer Society, its purpose, and its programs and services. You’ll also be introduced to the First Link® referral program.
Learing Objectives
When you have completed this session, you will be able to:
Session 2 includes the following parts:
Part 1: Who We Are
Part 2: How We Help
Part 3: Why is First Link® Important?
Part 4: Making a Referral to First Link®
Session Summary
Work through the various parts of the session at your leisure. Move from one part to another at your own pace and in the order that makes sense to you, based on your own needs and interests.
At any time, you may scroll to the Search bar at the top of the page and type a specific question or topic, or reach out to your Community Dementia Ambassador Coordinator who would be happy to assist you. The Coordinator can be reached at ambassador@alzheimer.ab.ca
A dementia-friendly community is a place where people living with dementia, their families and care partners feel included and supported. While creating dementia-friendly communities, individuals and organizations should focus on both the physical and social environments to ensure they are fully accessible.
Watch this short, animated video about the importance of building dementia-friendly communities and the actions you can take to ensure people living with dementia feel supported and included.
Learn more at Dementia Friendly Canada!
Complete the community "cloud" exercise below. Document your ideas about what makes up your community. Think about people, places, emotions and think about how important each are important to you and your community members.
Text a picture to 1-780-540-7554 (message & data rates may apply).
Let’s explore some of the key characteristics and skills required to be an effective Community Dementia Ambassador.
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Community Dementia Ambassadors are individuals who:
Community Dementia Ambassadors may be:
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To fulfill the role of a Community Dementia Ambassador, AS AB/NT is seeking individuals who:
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Community Dementia Ambassador Volunteer Role Description
We hope our analogy of brain function as a highway system has been helpful to you.
If you'd like to watch the explainer video again from beginning to end or are doing so for the first time, please feel free to pause it whenever you need and jot down any questions that arise.
Our Client Services team invite you to join them at a virtual or in person First Link Connection session to discuss the information shared in this short program.
Please ensure you have the sound on when watching this video to benefit from the full experience, or alternatively review the transcript below.
Introduction
It may be helpful to imagine the brain of a person without dementia as a solid stable highway system just like the one illustrated here.
Travelling around this highway system are couriers that deliver and retrieve information to and from different areas of the brain
Think of the area responsible for thought as the control center. Couriers are dispatched from here to retrieve and deliver the information required.
One of the areas the couriers visit is the short term memory. The short term memory holds small amounts of information recently received. Imagine that the information is held in a small filing cabinet in the short term memory.
Next, let’s consider long term memory. Long term memory is stored in a different location of the brain than short term memory. Think of long term memory as a large room with many big filing cabinets.
Let’s assume these large filing cabinets store ten years of memories. The courier will go to the filing cabinet where the memory is stored to retrieve the information needed. For example, if we are asked “Where did you go to high school and when?” , the courier will go to the filing cabinet that holds the memories for that period of time in our life.
Let’s now consider how the brain handles reasoning.
Reasoning is the process we go through to answer questions or complete tasks. We all reason differently.
We’re going to explore three types of reasoning questions or tasks.
Firstly, opinion questions. Opinion questions take more than just memory. They require reasoning; the brain’s ability to put multiple ideas together, weigh the consequences and make a decision. It can be as simple as being asked your opinion about how you feel about something.
For example “how do you feel about online banking?” Whether you like online banking because you think it’s convenient and saves time, or you don’t like online banking because you think it’s not secure or it’s confusing, there is no right or wrong answer.
Next, let’s consider processing questions and tasks such as activities of daily living. For example, “How do you make a pot of coffee?” Would you agree that the answer can be broken into maybe five steps? This type of question would result in more or less the same answer for most people.
However, higher level processing questions or tasks are more complex. They require more thought and reasoning than a simple processing question, and take more time to come to an answer. For example, “how would you downsize the contents of a house into a two bedroom condo?” This takes longer to figure out. It’s likely that if we were all asked this question, our answers would be very different. Someone might say they would make a list first, someone else might say that they would pick a room and start sorting. Complex questions and tasks like these require much greater reasoning abilities.
We should also point out that, so far, we have only been discussing questions that require a verbal response so all these questions have gone to the communication area of the brain.
Because we have only asked verbal response questions the courier has travelled to communication where the answer is delivered. Instead of a verbal response question, if we asked someone to show us how they would scratch their back, they first have to use their reasoning abilities and then send messages to their arms so they can show they would lift one arm over their head, bend it at the elbow and place their hand on their back.
So that is how a brain without dementia works: couriers are dispatched from the thought center and drive back and forth along the highways delivering and retrieving information to and from different areas of the brain.
Introduction
Now, let’s talk about the brain of a person who is living with dementia and consider once again the idea that the brain can be represented as a highway system.
In this situation there is an eighteen wheel truck carrying a big load of boxes traveling down the highway to short term memory. This is where we first begin to see glitches in the memory. Think about that smooth solid highway. At some point a large crack has developed causing the truck to drop a couple of boxes off the truck. Eventually that crack develops into a large gap leaving all those boxes behind. The solid highway to short term memory is gone. This is when carers may need to develop strategies to compensate and more effectively communicate with persons living with dementia.
It is important to note that treatments such as Reminyl, Exelon, Aricept, Donepezil and Ebixaact act like a snow plow or a grader, pushing the boxes off the road, keeping the road clear. Although there is no cure for the disease, these treatments may reduce the symptoms.
However, as time goes on, boxes continue to fall along the highway and even the snowplows can’t keep it clear.
Boxes build up first on the road to the short term memory. The road eventually becomes blocked and the courier will no longer be able to retrieve the information required. This is what is happening when a person with dementia says “I don’t know” or “I can’t remember”
By comparison, when boxes start falling in long term memory, the boxes will fall in front of the most recent memories first. In this case, they will fall in front of the 2020 filing cabinet, meaning someone with dementia will struggle with the most recent long term memory files first. They might not recall who visited last summer. As the disease progresses and more boxes start to fall, then getting information from the 2000’s, 90’s, 80’s, etc… will be a struggle.
We should also point out that the road to short term memory does not fill up with boxes before they also start to fall elsewhere. In order to get a diagnosis of dementia the boxes must fall in at least two areas of the brain. We are going to discuss some of these areas now. This is not necessarily the order that the disease progresses, everyone experiences the disease differently.
Reasoning
When we consider the brain of a person living with dementia and how it handles reasoning, and in particular, opinion questions, we note that people have typically held their opinions for a long time and so these questions are helpful as they are more connected to long term memories where there are less boxes on the highway!
What people with this disease tell us is that once there was a diagnosis, people stopped asking their opinions. Why do we ask someone’s opinion? We ask because we value what someone has to say. People with this disease need to feel valued.
If we consider a processing question or task such as the steps required to make a cup of coffee, people will often say there are around five steps. But there are actually around fifty steps. You need to go find the kitchen, know where the coffee is kept, how much coffee to put in, how many filters to use, etc. and so on.
The brain of a person without dementia goes through these steps so fast we don’t even realize how many are involved.
Think of another activity of daily living. Each time the person with the disease must go through fifty steps.
Sometimes the person with the disease will get stuck on a step. And our instinct may be to jump in and do it for them. Don’t take that task away from them. If the person with the disease gets stuck on a step, help them through that particular step. It doesn’t necessarily mean they can’t do the task.
However, if the disease has progressed to the point where the person living with dementia is struggling with all of the steps that go into activities of daily living like making a cup of coffee, or brushing teeth, we believe it isn’t fair to ask them higher level reasoning questions or expect them to engage in complex tasks or questions such as downsizing their home or managing their investments. Care partners may therefore need to assist with the higher level questions and tasks before assisting with the activities of daily living to avoid the person living with dementia feeling frustrated or inadequate.
So what types of questions should we be asking to help communicate more effectively with persons living with dementia?
Firstly, consider the types of questions you are asking; open-ended questions such as “where do you want to go for dinner?” can be overwhelming for a person living with dementia.
Try giving them two choices: “Do you want to go to Swiss Chalet or Denny’s?”
If you notice the person with the disease always chooses the last option you gave, try moving instead to closed, yes or no type questions.
If there are lots of conversations going on at once, the person with the disease may be overwhelmed or not be able to follow. Try and have a ‘one on one’ conversation with them so they can follow and participate.
As boxes build up on the highway to and from the communication area of the brain, the person living with dementia will have difficulty finding the right words. We can help them fill in the words, if we know what they are trying to say.
Or, redirect the conversation; “Oh, I’ve had such a long day, let’s go have a cup of tea and worry about that later”. Put the focus on you, not on the person living with the disease.
Be careful of your use of pronouns; he/she/we/they. The person living with dementia may not recall who ‘she’ is. Use people’s names when bringing them into your conversation.
What if I told you that there is an area of the brain that doesn’t have a highway? This area is called the emotional memory.
Emotional memory is part of a person until the end of life. The person living with dementia may not remember your name or how you connect with them but they will know how you make them feel. It is important to know even a small act like putting lotion on a hand or holding a hand for a moment provides an emotional connection. We therefore encourage care partners to use the senses: taste, touch, sound, sight and smell to be able to engage with the person living with dementia.
There are lots of other areas of the brain that we have not discussed in this short program such as awareness of time, physical movement, and more. More information about these can be accessed via our Client Services team or on the ASANT Café.
In conclusion, for most experiences of dementia the disease starts in short term memory and moves to other areas over time. Returning to our highway system, this is represented in the early stage with those few boxes in a few areas, in the middle stage more boxes in more areas and in late stage dementia lots of boxes in lots of areas.
Looking for additional resources to strengthen your understanding of the information shared so far?
Below are some examples of the additional resources available from the Alzheimer Society of Alberta and Northwest Territories. If you are looking for more information on a topic not covered here, please reach out to our Client Services team.
An overview of Alzheimer's Disease, it's particular forms and their effects as well as guidance about living with dementia.
Guidance regarding current treatment options for Alzheimer's Disease.
A guide to the impact dementia has on communication along with some guidance to help you maintain healthy and effective communication.
Concerned about memory loss? Here we list 10 of the warning signs of dementia.
Earlier, we learned about brain function in a person without dementia. Now we begin to explore the changing brain function in a person living with dementia. The highway system analogy used in these videos is an illustration of brain function.
Watch this first short video explanation of how the brain functions in a person living with dementia. The highway system analogy used in the video is an illustration of brain function.
Please note that the treatments referenced in the video are those currently available at the time the video was produced. Treatment options should always be discussed with a physician.
This is the first of four short videos exploring brain function in a person living with dementia.
Make sure you have the sound on when watching the video to access the full experience, or alternatively read the transcript below.
Now, let’s talk about the brain of a person who is living with dementia and consider once again the idea that the brain can be represented as a highway system.
Short Term Memory
In this situation there is an eighteen wheel truck carrying a big load of boxes traveling down the highway to short term memory. This is where we first begin to see glitches in the memory. Think about that smooth solid highway. At some point a large crack has developed causing the truck to drop a couple of boxes off the truck. Eventually that crack develops into a large gap leaving all those boxes behind. The solid highway to short term memory is gone. This is when carers may need to develop strategies to compensate and more effectively communicate with persons living with dementia.
It is important to note that treatments such as Reminyl, Exelon, Aricept, Donepezil and Ebixaact act like a snow plow or a grader, pushing the boxes off the road, keeping the road clear. Although there is no cure for the disease, these treatments may reduce the symptoms.
However, as time goes on, boxes continue to fall along the highway and even the snowplows can’t keep it clear.
Boxes build up first on the road to the short term memory. The road eventually becomes blocked and the courier will no longer be able to retrieve the information required. This is what is happening when a person with dementia says “I don’t know” or “I can’t remember”
Long Term Memory
By comparison, when boxes start falling in long term memory, the boxes will fall in front of the most recent memories first. In this case, they will fall in front of the 2020 filing cabinet, meaning someone with dementia will struggle with the most recent long term memory files first. They might not recall who visited last summer. As the disease progresses and more boxes start to fall, then getting information from the 2000’s, 90’s, 80’s, etc… will be a struggle.
We should also point out that the road to short term memory does not fill up with boxes before they also start to fall elsewhere. In order to get a diagnosis of dementia the boxes must fall in at least two areas of the brain. We are going to discuss some of these areas now. This is not necessarily the order that the disease progresses, everyone experiences the disease differently
Please download this PDF of the video transcript if you would like to print a copy.
Watch this second short video explanation of how the brain functions in a person living with dementia. The highway system analogy used in these videos is an illustration of brain function.
This is the second of four short videos exploring brain function in a person living with dementia.
Make sure you have the sound on when watching the video to access the full experience, or alternatively read the transcript below.
What people with this disease tell us is that once there was a diagnosis, people stopped asking their opinions. Why do we ask someone’s opinion? We ask because we value what someone has to say. People with this disease need to feel valued.
If we consider a processing question or task such as the steps required to make a cup of coffee, people will often say there are around five steps. But there are actually around fifty steps. You need to go find the kitchen, know where the coffee is kept, how much coffee to put in, how many filters to use, etc. and so on.
The brain of a person without dementia goes through these steps so fast we don’t even realize how many are involved.
Think of another activity of daily living. Each time the person with the disease must go through fifty steps. Sometimes the person with the disease will get stuck on a step. And our instinct may be to jump in and do it for them. Don’t take that task away from them. If the person with the disease gets stuck on a step, help them through that particular step. It doesn’t necessarily mean they can’t do the task.
However, if the disease has progressed to the point where the person living with dementia is struggling with all of the steps that go into activities of daily living like making a cup of coffee, or brushing teeth, we believe it isn’t fair to ask them higher level reasoning questions or expect them to engage in complex tasks or questions such as downsizing their home or managing their investments.
Care partners may therefore need to assist with the higher level questions and tasks before assisting with the activities of daily living to avoid the person living with dementia feeling frustrated or inadequate.
Please download this PDF of the video transcript if you would like to print a copy.
Watch this third short video explanation of how the brain functions in a person living with dementia. The highway system analogy used in these videos is an illustration of brain function.
This is the third of four short videos exploring brain function in a person living with dementia.
Make sure you have the sound on when watching the video to access the full experience, or alternatively read the transcript below.
So what types of questions should we be asking to help communicate more effectively with persons living with dementia?
Firstly, consider the types of questions you are asking; open-ended questions such as “where do you want to go for dinner?” can be overwhelming for a person living with dementia.
Try giving them two choices: “Do you want to go to Swiss Chalet or Denny’s?”
If you notice the person with the disease always chooses the last option you gave, try moving instead to closed, yes or no type questions.
If there are lots of conversations going on at once, the person with the disease may be overwhelmed or not be able to follow. Try and have a ‘one on one’ conversation with them so they can follow and participate.
As boxes build up on the highway to and from the communication area of the brain, the person living with dementia will have difficulty finding the right words. We can help them fill in the words, if we know what they are trying to say.
Or, redirect the conversation; “Oh, I’ve had such a long day, let’s go have a cup of tea and worry about that later”. Put the focus on you, not on the person living with the disease.
Be careful of your use of pronouns; he/she/we/they. The person living with dementia may not recall who ‘she’ is. Use people’s names when bringing them into your conversation.
Please download this PDF of the video transcript if you would like to print a copy.
Watch this third short video explanation of how the brain functions in a person living with dementia. The highway system analogy used in these videos is an illustration of brain function.
This is the fourth of four short videos exploring brain function in a person living with dementia.
Make sure you have the sound on when watching the video to access the full experience, or alternatively read the transcript below.
What if I told you that there is an area of the brain that doesn’t have a highway? This area is called the emotional memory.
Emotional memory is part of a person until the end of life. The person living with dementia may not remember your name or how you connect with them but they will know how you make them feel. It is important to know even a small act like putting lotion on a hand or holding a hand for a moment provides an emotional connection. We therefore encourage care partners to use the senses: taste, touch, sound, sight and smell to be able to engage with the person living with dementia.
Please download this PDF of the video transcript if you would like to print a copy.
There are lots of other areas of the brain that we have not discussed in this short program such as awareness of time, physical movement, and more. More information about these can be accessed via our Client Services team or on the ASANT Café.
In conclusion, for most experiences of dementia the disease starts in short term memory and moves to other areas over time. Returning to our highway system, this is represented in the early stage with those few boxes in a few areas, in the middle stage more boxes in more areas and in late stage dementia lots of boxes in lots of areas.
In exactly the same way we use different names or titles to label the different types of a common cold, we use different names or titles to label the different diagnoses of dementia.
While dementia may be the title we give to the disease, there are many types of dementia as illustrated here. Dementia is an umbrella term.
Mixed dementia is diagnosed when the person living with dementia experiences more than one type concurrently.
There are however other types of dementia that we don't deal with in this introduction. More information about the other types of dementia is available via the Alzheimer Society of Alberta and Northwest Territories Client Services team.
