Letter: Communitywide help available on dementia

We are fortunate to have the same initiative here on Hilton Head Island and Bluffton. Memory Matters is a community-based nonprofit organization here that strives to be a center of excellence for persons with Alzheimer's disease or other forms of dementia.

Early this year, Memory Matters began a program called "Purple Angel" that works with businesses, churches, governmental agencies, etc., to train their employees and members how to be sensitive to people with memory loss. The program covers dementia identification, how to introduce sensitivity to a specific issue and how to provide professional solutions when employees are confronted with a person who has memory problems.

Each training course is tailored to the specific organization's function, many times establishing protocols to avoid problems with folks that might forget before they happen.

So far this year, Memory Matters staff has trained 40 organizations and more than 800 people on how to deal with dementia in the business world.

Robert Rutherford

This story was originally published September 28, 2015 at 12:17 AM with the headline "Letter: Communitywide help available on dementia."