What We Do
Simile provides education, experiences and insights that help people discover how they are similar despite their differences.
Our Relationship Enhancement approach to care promotes personal well-being at home and in community providing life balance to the physical care currently offered to older adults.
What is Relationship Enhancement?
Relationship Enhancement is a unique, sustainable approach to care that offers a better understanding and appreciation of the experience of cognitive decline as well as the communication skills and techniques needed to build a new, enhanced relationship.
The goal is to connect through feelings, build trust and provide meaningful care at home and in the community to delay or prevent admission to a long-term care facility.
Cognitive decline is used instead of “dementia” or “Alzheimer’s” to describe changes in an older person’s ability to think, reason and make plans. This term more accurately describes the physical symptoms of the condition and separates them from a person’s feelings and coping skills – their unique experience of their changing circumstances.
The Relationship Enhancement Training Program
The Relationship Enhancement Training Program offers the opportunity to build a new relationship with the person you know and/or care for based on feelings because a person’s feelings remain intact despite the affects of cognitive decline on the brain (Strauss, 2001).
We can provide you with a better understanding of the feelings (often referred to as behaviours) someone is experiencing by helping you step inside their world and view situations from their perspective. With this new perspective, you relate and learn how to communicate differently so a person who experiences cognitive decline can understand you better.
Building a new, enhanced relationship helps meet a person’s need for comfort when the effects of cognitive decline can make them anxious, frustrated and angry reducing their feelings of disconnection and isolation.
Training Program Objectives
- Create meaningful moments of engagement with a person who experiences cognitive decline
- Establish a cooperative relationship with a person who experiences cognitive decline
- View support as a partnership or collaboration that encourages learning for all
How We Can Help
Simile is currently pursuing support work with people in Ottawa, Ontario who have recently received a neuropsychological assessment with a diagnosis of dementia.
If you recently received a neuropsychological assessment with a diagnosis of dementia and are interested in working with us, please connect with us through our contact page here. We look forward to speaking with you.
Relocating to Ottawa, Ontario will also provide opportunities for Simile to grow through partnerships. If you are an individual, group or organization interested in learning more about how we can work together for the benefit of people who experience cognitive decline, please connect with us through our contact page here.
Our Mission To improve the quality of home support available for people who experience cognitive decline through the development and delivery of the Relationship Enhancement training program for family members and support workers that focuses on meaningful care.
Our Vision To create a culture of care in home support where meaningful care for people experiencing cognitive decline is achieved through complementary programs for family members, support workers and community members.
Beverly Harper, B.A., P.S.W. is a Creative Solutions Specialist. She has conducted extensive research and gained valuable insights from her front-line work as a Personal Support Worker with a variety of different people who experience cognitive decline in both home and institutional settings. Relationship Enhancement reflects her unique approach to care that incorporates credible, published research and uses examples from everyday life. 
References:
The Myth of Alzheimer’s, Peter J. Whitehouse, St. Martin’s Press, New York, NY, 2008
Talking to Alzheimer’s, Claudia J. Strauss, New Harbinger Publications Inc., Oakland, CA, 2001
*From Ulysses - Lord Alfred Tennyson (1809-1892)
© Simile – Training in Supportive Care, 2022
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