Information for people with dementia and care partners

What GREAT CR offers is a message of hope: hope that you can find ways to overcome difficulties and ‘live well’ with dementia

How does GREAT Cognitive Rehabilitation (GREAT CR) work?

Dementia makes it harder to do things:

  • everyday things

  • things you want to do

  • things you need to do

  • things that bring joy into your life

This could be because you get muddled up or lose concentration, or perhaps you are frightened to start in case something goes wrong.

The good news is that you don’t necessarily have to stop doing things that are difficult, but you may have to find different ways of doing them.

This is where GREAT CR comes in. The GREAT CR practitioner:

  • Finds out what you want to improve or manage better

  • Helps you choose the most important thing to tackle (set a goal)

  • Figures out why this activity is difficult or where things are going wrong

  • Suggests some strategies that could help

  • Works with you to plan what strategies to try

  • Supports you to try out the plan and adjust it if necessary

  • Keeps enabling you to make progress

  • Celebrates your successes

Self help resources

Sometimes, you might be able to solve the problem yourself, and come up with a strategy that works. Or perhaps your care partner can problem-solve with you. A group of people living with dementia have put together some resources to help you do this.

Click here to access the self help resources (the link will take you to the Alzheimer's Society website).

How to access GREAT CR

Cognitive Rehabilitation is not widely available yet. In some cases a Memory Clinic might be able to offer it or an NHS GP may be able to arrange it through specialist services. It is worth asking about it.

NHS and social care staff will soon be able to take an e-learning course (available through NHS Learning Hub) to find out how to provide GREAT CR for people living with dementia.