Allied Health Professionals

Speaker: Vicki Barry, Care Partner, Young Onset Dementia Advocate, Network Orchestrator After 12 years of being a single mum, marriage brought renewed hope and dreams of an easier life ahead. Life was good for a while and then it changed. Using the acronym UNITED to frame her presentation, Vicki will share her personal experiences supporting her partner Michael to live the best life possible with Alzheimer’s disease, working with a range of allied health professionals to achieve this.

Speaker: Dr Morag Taylor Senior Lecturer, Physiotherapy, School of Health Sciences, Faculty of Medicine & Health, UNSW, Conjoint Senior Research Fellow at Neuroscience Research Australia, Falls, Balance and Injury Research Centre The iFOCIS RCT aimed to determine the fall prevention efficacy of two allied health interventions: a home hazard reduction and home-based exercise program, in community-dwelling older people living with dementia. Three hundred and nine people participated in the 12-month trial with a multidisciplinary team leading the study. The primary outcome was rate of falls. Results and learnings will be presented.

Speaker: Ellie Newman Dementia Lead and Head of Physiotherapy, Armadale Kalamunda Hospital, East Metropolitan Health Service, WA This presentation will showcase various quality improvement initiatives led by allied health staff in Australia’s first Metropolitan Health Service to be recognised as working towards being dementia friendly.

Speaker: Elizabeth Oliver Occupational Therapist, Curtin University Maggie Beer’s Big Mission is a social experiment designed to enhance the mealtime experience for older adults living in residential care. Join Occupational Therapist and Project Leader, Elizabeth Oliver, as she describes how changes to meals and dining experiences can have transformational effects and reciprocal benefits for residents, staff, and the culture of care. Elizabeth will demonstrate how an embedded model of allied health that encompasses a multi-tiered system of supports can foster culture change and enhance quality of care.

Speaker: Lindsay Bent ASM OStJ Churchill Fellow Clinical Lead, Communications Centres Specialist Operations and Coordination Ambulance Victoria Australian ambulance services are acutely aware of the impact dementia has on an individual and their carers but has made little progress to directly address this issue. This presentation will provide an overview of learnings through a Winston Churchill Fellowship, how ambulance trusts in the UK have worked towards becoming more dementia friendly, the key drivers for change and the learnings for allied health professionals.

Previous speakers will come together to discuss the presentations from the morning and reaffirm the role of allied health in achieving safe and high-quality care for people living with dementia, including supporting successful transitions of care across the care continuum.

Speaker: Megan Maack, CEO of Childhood Dementia Initiative While dementia is typically associated with aging, a growing understanding of childhood dementia is reshaping our approach to caring for impacted children. This talk will explore the unique challenges and care needs of children affected by dementia, offering allied health professionals’ crucial insights into this often-overlooked group of conditions. Learn how your expertise can make a vital difference in supporting these children and their families.

Speaker: Associate Professor Jade Cartwright, School of Health Sciences, University of Tasmania This presentation will empower allied health professionals, with a particular focus on speech pathology, to address the communication needs of people with dementia and their families, emphasising the importance of giving voice, fostering cohesive teamwork, and building connections.

Speaker: Professor James Vickers, University of Tasmania and Director of the Wicking Dementia Research and Education Centre There has been significant progress in knowledge about the potentially modifiable risk factors for dementia, however, public understanding of dementia risk is limited. This presentation will review educational and public health approaches to reducing dementia risk in the community, highlighting areas that fit within the scope of practice of allied health practitioners.

Speaker: Professor Blossom Stephan, Chair in Dementia (Curtin University and Dementia Australia) and Director of the Dementia Centre of Excellence Discover how epidemiological research findings have been translated into dementia risk assessment models for use in clinical practice, including evidence-based prevention strategies targeting the key modifiable risk factors for dementia. A practical framework for implementing risk reduction interventions across allied health practice, focusing on lifestyle, social, and health risk factors will also be presented.

Speaker: Professor Elaine Hunter, National Allied Health Professions Consultant, Alzheimer Scotland Visiting Professor, Edinburgh Napier University Connecting People, Connecting Support (Alzheimer Scotland 2017, 2020, 2024) is an evidence based allied health professional (AHP) dementia policy in Scotland that outlines how AHPs can support people living with dementia and their families with 4 ambitions to transform practice and integral to Scotland’s Dementia Strategy. To integrate national policy to local practice for the benefit of people with dementia and their supporters, a co-ordinated implementation model was developed. The presentation will share context, a whole-system tailored-delivery model that integrates rehabilitation into the AHP offer, progress to date, key enablers for change, implementation gaps and our priorities for the next 24 months. The presentation will consider if an allied health professional policy in dementia could be transferable to meet the needs of people with lived experience in Australia.

Speaker: Associate Professor Nathan D’Cunha, Dementia and Cognition Theme Lead, Centre for Ageing Research and Translation, University of Canberra There is increasing evidence that multicomponent interventions help people with dementia live well after diagnosis and provide essential support to their care partners. One example in the ACT is the allied health led Sustainable Personalised Interventions for Cognitive, Care, and Engagement (SPICE) program based at the University of Canberra Hospital. SPICE is a combination of evidence-based interventions which includes group and individual components over ten weeks. This presentation will describe the program, its benefits, and challenges to implementation.

Speaker: Professor Michele Callisaya, Menzies Institute for Medical Research, University of Tasmania and National Centre for Healthy Ageing, Monash University The presentations will outline Dementia rehabilitation as a human right, the barriers in accessing rehabilitation and solutions co-designed in this project to improve access.

Speaker: Dr Claire O’Connor, School of Psychology, UNSW; Neuroscience Research Australia; HammondCare Allied health professionals and other stakeholders with an interest in rehabilitation and reablement in dementia have recently participated in a national survey process. Outcomes from this process will be presented, including discussion around the identified enablers and barriers to implementing these allied health interventions in practice, and the strategies developed to support effective implementation.