Care, not cure. After hearing late-breaking news from the Alzheimer’s and Dementia Conference, it remains clear that care, not cure, is where hope lives.
For too long, our culture has been searching for a cure as if cure is the only meaningful hope to offer families living with dementia. That search is important — but it is not the only work that matters. While science pursues treatments, families are living now. And right now, the real hope for people with dementia is not a future drug; it is the quality of care they receive today. At Dementia Together, we call family members and care partners what they really are: CARE partners, not cure partners.
Being a CARE partner means shifting who we redirect. So often, everyone instinctively looks to the person with dementia to behave differently — to remember, to reason, to comply. That expectation is quietly cruel because it asks someone with a disability to correct the disability. Instead, we must redirect the care partner approach.
With dementia, the mind’s ability to store recent facts may no longer be reliable, but feelings remain deeply intact. People with dementia still feel loved, safe, frightened, joyful, sad, or embarrassed. When we teach family members to respond to feelings rather than facts, agitation and anxiety can ease because the underlying emotional need is being met.
This is not about medical jargon, complex diagnostics, or knowing every pathophysiological pathway impacting cognition. The medical model has too often left families without hopeful answers, and all roads seem to lead to antipsychotics or anti-anxiety medications. But dementia care is not only about managing symptoms — it is about meeting human need. It is about practical, counter-intuitive shifts anyone can make to promote lifelong well-being.
For example, when a loved one insists on going home to a place they no longer live, the typical correction — “No, this is your home now” — often escalates distress. A CARE partner might instead say, “You want to go home. Of course you do. Tell me about your home.” CARE partners strive to give the feeling of home without actually going to another location, because home is a feeling. Home is where everything makes sense. Rather than trying to redirect the person who wants to go home, we need to redirect those around them to create the feeling of home in the meantime — until they can get home to a place where everything makes sense. That simple redirection validates the feeling for the expert, reduces fear, and restores dignity.
Many training programs and systems still aim to certify knowledge about dementia as if more certification equals better daily life for people in their care. But checklists and credentials do not automatically change how a daughter greets her mother at the kitchen table, or how a spouse responds to repeated questions about driving, or how a staff member labels anxiety later in the day as sundowning, with the assumption that it is inevitable. What transforms daily life are small, repeatable practices that change interactions in the moment. At Dementia Together, we share simple, practical tools for CARE partners.
We’re known for saying, in the face of the typical cultural dementia narrative, “It doesn’t have to be that way.” The medical model has value, but it often frames living well with dementia as the exception, not the expectation. We believe that expectation must change. Living well is possible today when families are taught and apply simple, counter-intuitive strategies that promote curiosity over confrontation and connection over contradiction.
Dementia Together is redirecting the system. We focus less on accumulating certifications and more on cultivating simple, practical strategies that work now. Our aim is to equip families to be confident CARE partners who reduce anxiety, limit agitation, and create days that feel safe and meaningful for the person they love. When care becomes the priority, hope shifts from “someday” to “now.”
If you’re tired of waiting for a cure to make today better, join us in the work of caring well. Redirect the expectation, not the person. Be a CARE partner. Learn more about these counter-intuitive strategies in our Doing Dementia Together
classes.
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