Content area
Full Text
(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.)
Tom Kitwood's emergence as a leading figure in the international field of dementia care has continued since his death in 1998. His critique and revision of the theories that underpin dementia-care practice challenged the prevailing understanding of the nature and experience of dementia among researchers and clinicians. In many respects, his eclectic writing reflected the many strands of his own biography: a graduate of the natural sciences at Cambridge, an ordained priest, a chemistry teacher prior to completing a PhD in social psychology at the University of Bradford, where he was subsequently a senior lecturer and professor. Kitwood is probably best known for highlighting the importance of human experience, viewing the person with dementia through the lens of 'personhood', developing clinical practice through the tool of Dementia Care Mapping, and establishing the Bradford Dementia Group to develop 'person-centred care'. His decade of involvement in dementia care generated a breadth of material, theories and perspectives on understanding the lived experience of dementia, the complexities of care and how best to develop services.
A central challenge of this book is set out in the Introduction. This recognises that 'the overall sweep of Kitwood's work is vast', and that there are...