Listen to the experts

Lynda

Lynda Hogg, member of Scottish Dementia Working Group

Audio quote from Lynda

'I'm Lynda Hogg and I'm Vice Chair of the Scottish Dementia Working Group.

'As far as communication goes, keeping things simple, focusing and keeping to a routine really helps me, and I think it's other people that upset the apple cart. I can function on quite a high level if I stick to these three principles - these three guiding principles actually for me.

'You'd find me very different if you got me some days when, because somebody's rushed me or upset me, my speech can go a bit. My brain is actually quite scrambled and I don't function at this level at all. So I think it's quite important that people do function at different levels, and you have to adapt.

'It's really important to me that I like routine and I like meetings to be at the same place. I'm a bit adaptable but, you know, I like things to be fairly the same. I like to be in control.

'It's helpful to have an agenda and papers in advance, because I like to read through everything and maybe tick off what I'm really interested in - what I might want to say, if you can get a word in sometimes! It's just helpful to have it there in black and white and not keep everything in your head, that's really difficult.

'As far as written information is concerned, I think if it's simple - put it in precis form, whatever you want to say, read the article yourself, whatever it is, and cut it down to nice bite sizes.

'Maybe put a paragraph at the top and put your bullet points and don't have the fancy words or anything. Keep it simple, so that it's understandable really to everybody. It's quite a simple thing to do really.'