Why Choose Dementia Behavior Consulting?

Ten Reasons: 

1. General Experience. I’ve been working in the aging field for 22 years; the last 12 focusing on people with dementia and their family and professional care partners.
2. Hands-on experience caring for elders with dementia. I started in the aging field as a nurse aide in a nursing home where my grandfather lived and passed away. Then I worked as a home health aide with frail elders with dementia in the community. Later on I worked as a social worker in two care homes for people with dementia in a nursing home.
3. Extensive evidence-based knowledge and expertise in understanding and preventing various forms of distressing and harmful behavioral expressions in people living with dementia.
4. Extensive experience in conducting research studies about the care provided to people with dementia both in the community and long-term care homes. My unique strength lies in evaluating the practical value of research studies as well as translating and implementing useful findings into practice.
5. Extensive experience in volunteering for innovative and leading dementia-specific organizations dedicated to the human rights, dignity of these individuals, reduction of stigma, and provision of the highest practical quality of care.
6. International perspective. Having lived and worked in different countries — Israel, Canada, and U.S. — I am uniquely positioned to understand universal phenomena related to various forms of behavioral expressions in this population and cross-cultural care-related issues.
7. Strong commitment to provision of the highest practical quality of care to people living with dementia and support and education to their care partners. Preserving the personhood, identify, and dignity of these individuals has always been my first priority.
8. Demonstrated commitment to timely dissemination of useful practical knowledge to those who need the information the most – people with dementia, their family members, and professional care partners (such as direct care staff and home health aides).
9. Creative non-linear / lateral thinker. Working with and caring effectively for people with dementia often requires high level of insight, creativity, and outside the box solutions. Sometime “the box” itself needs to be removed…
10. On a personal level. Both my grandmothers had dementia during the last years of their lives. I have first-hand understanding of the tremendous impacts of dementia on the entire family and what it takes to care for these individuals effectively and with dignity.

Above all, my work has always been characterized as independent from special interests. My core guiding principle is the best interest of people living with dementia and those who care for them.

My source of inspiration is the late Professor Shimon Bergman, Israel, “a Renaissance man who led Gerontologists across the world to link research and practice.” Prof. Bergman is considered the “father” of Gerontology as an area of specialization in Israel.