The Daily Herald: With the help of Right at Home, Grayslake, Illinois Aims to Be Dementia-Friendly Community

Mike Steiner is working to make Grayslake a dementia-friendly community, starting with training sessions for area first responders on April 28th and 29th. The Daily Herald recently spoke with Mike and executive director and founder of CareSmart Illinois Christine Damon about the initiative.

"If we have a community with restaurants and hair salons and other places where the staff is trained on how to work with people with dementia and have the patience ... and the staff is aware of how to deal with that in a very caring manner, it makes it better for the business, it makes it better for the community members, and it's just good all the way around,” Steiner said.

While dementia-friendly communities are more common in Europe, Grayslake will be one of only a handful of communities in the U.S.

"Anybody with dementia is hypersensitive to so many things. So, if there is a problem, they might be upset by something that we wouldn't think (is upsetting) or they perceive things differently. So, they can be easily agitated. And if people are agitated, they don't think clearly and they don't respond what we would consider appropriately," Damon said.