Practice Spotlight - Partnering with Carers: Using a Functional Cognitive Approach in Dementia
This session explores how occupational therapists can use a functional cognitive approach to support people living with dementia by equipping carers and families with practical strategies, communication skills, and education to foster meaningful engagement, reduce burnout, and improve quality of life across diverse care settings.
Program Overview
Occupational therapists play a pivotal role in supporting people living with dementia—not only through direct interventions, but also by partnering with families and carers to expand understanding and knowledge about how best to create supportive environments and promote functional independence.
This Practice Spotlight is designed to identify occupational therapy skills needed to apply a functional cognitive approach to supporting people living with dementia, but also how to ‘translate’ this approach so families and caregivers (paid and unpaid) can also learn ot use the principles themselves.
Through a practical, evidence-informed lens, this session will explore how OTs can help carers to understand the cognitive changes associated with dementia, the functional impacts and consider common myths about changed behaviour. Strategies to facilitate carers supporting meaningful engagement and daily participation will also be discussed.
Whether supporting a young carer, engaging with culturally diverse families, or working with intergenerational caregivers, OTs can significantly influence how care is delivered and experienced across home, community, hospital and residential settings.
By developing stronger communication skills and a deeper understanding of functional cognition in everyday contexts, OTs can become key facilitators in recognising strengths of families and carers and partner with them to optimise outcomes for the people they support.
Key learning objectives for this session are:
- Understand and apply a functional cognitive approach to guide interactions and interventions with carers, families, and support workers.
- Learn how to explain cognitive and behavioural changes to carers, families and caregivers in ways that challenges myths and promotes supportive responses
- Identify OT-specific precursor skills needed to collaborate effectively with carers, such as coaching, active listening, and reflective questioning.
- Develop practical strategies for educating carers and families on supporting meaningful engagement and participation for people living with dementia.
- Enhance communication skills to model an inclusive approach and discuss the potential impact on participation of people living with dementia.
- Apply concepts to a diverse range of carers, such as young carers and families from diverse backgrounds.
By attending this session you will:
- Develop a renewed understanding of how to leverage occupational therapy tools and knowledge to build carer capacity, help them reduce burnout, and foster environments that promote quality of life for all involved.
- Build your knowledge of practical tools and strategies that you can use to support carers, families and caregivers
- Develop a clearer understanding of how you can best support carers, families and significant others for the benefit of people living with dementia
WHO SHOULD ATTEND?
Suitable for OTs at any career stage.
WORKSHOP DETAILS
DATE
Friday 12th September 2025
TIMES
1:30pm | NSW, ACT, VIC, TAS, QLD |
1:00pm | SA, NT |
11:30am | WA |
This session will run for approx. 90 minutes.
Please log on 10 minutes prior to the start of the session.
VENUE
This is a 100% virtual event on Zoom. You will receive an email with details to access the day prior to the scheduled event date.
CPD HOURS
Total CPD claimable workshop hours: 1.5 hours
A certificate of attendance will be issued upon completion of the full course. Please allow up to 48 hours for the certificate to appear in your CPD tracker.
ACCESS
This session will be recorded.
Participants will be able to access the course materials including recording online in their OTA account for the event and for a further 12 weeks after the event.
REGISTRATION FEES & INCLUSIONS
EARLY BIRD FEES: Register on or before 20 August 2025
OTA Member: $54
Student New Graduate: $49
Non Member: $70
(All pricing is inclusive of GST)
STANDARD FEES: Book on or after 21 August 2025
OTA Member: $60
Student / New Graduate: $54
Non Member: $78
(All pricing is inclusive of GST)
*Registrations close 10 September 2025,11.55pm AEST.
Members must be logged in with username and password in order to register at the member rate.
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DISCLAIMER
All information is correct at the time of publication. OTA reserves the right to alter or delete items from the CPD calendar as required, and takes no responsibility for any errors, omissions and changes.All workshop resources including copies of the presentation, along with all supporting documents and links are not for distribution and are the property of the presenter.
An OTA staff member or representative may be photographing this event for use in OTA publications and/ or on OTA social media sites. If you do not wish to be photographed, or have your image published please make this known to the OTA representative at your course or contact OTA on 1300 682 878 or at info@otaus.com.au
TERMS AND CONDITIONS (T&C)
T&C's are available here
CONTACT US
Please direct all enquiries to info@otaus.com.au or phone 1300 682 878
Presented By
Dr Jacki Wesson
Jacki has expertise in functional cognition, performance-based IADL assessment in mild cognitive impairment and dementia, and non-pharmacological behaviour support for people living with dementia across the continuum of ability. She has more than 20 years of clinical experience in health settings, including memory clinic and older people’s mental health, working in hospitals, community, and residential aged care, and in policy. Jacki is a senior lecturer in occupational therapy and early career researcher (ECR) at University of Sydney. Current funded projects she is leading include behaviour support for people living with dementia in residential care, and evaluating functional cognition screening in older people living with subtle functional change, and as part of a small ECR team, developing co-designed medication management resources for people living with dementia and their carers.
Dr Katya Numbers
Katya is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow and Lecturer at the Centre for Healthy Brain Ageing (CHeBA) within the Discipline of Psychiatry & Mental Health. Her work focuses on modifiable lifestyle factors associated with increased risk of dementia and identifying behavioural indicators of very early dementia. Specifically, her work focuses largely on the relationship between older adults’ self-reports of cognitive and function decline and risk of dementia, how mood and personality influence these relationships, and early intervention strategies.