ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on understanding dementia as a bio-psycho-social phenomenon and encouraging approaches to care/practice more consistent with Anti-oppression gerontology. It provides an in-depth and critical overview of dementia through linking the data on risk factors, types, and prevalence to social determinants of health. The chapter presents a person-centred approach as a starting point before highlighting critical concepts and practice approaches that social work scholars have brought to dementia studies, including validation therapy, intersectionality, cultural safety, citizenship as practice, and queer theory, and address the three in italics in depth. While the strengths perspective is increasingly adopted in dementia care, often paired with a personhood approach, social work has not always been so progressive in working with persons with dementia. The movement from personhood to citizenship has been led by social work scholars Ruth Bartlett in the UK and Deborah O’Connor in Canada, and it is within social work that this approach has really taken hold.
