TimeSlips Friends & Family Resources

October 28, 2021

Recognizing the need for additional resources for unpaid caregivers and those caring for a loved one at home, TimeSlips recently collaborated with support groups from the Alzheimer’s Association Michigan Chapter to develop resources to support the growing community of friends and family caregivers. These include a free Friends and Family online training module, free materials to host your own TimeSlips Engagement Party, and the TimeSlips Creative Care Imagination Kit. The hope for these resources is that they will bring the same sparkle and joy to people who yearn to connect, especially families with loved ones struggling with memory loss or isolation.

The Friends and Family training is a free 45-minute training that introduces TimeSlips and the core principles of the creative engagement techniques and demonstrates simple ways to weave creativity into our daily lives to create meaningful moments of connection with loved ones. The training is perfect for anyone caring for a loved one looking for new ways to communicate and connect but might not have much time in their busy schedule to attend a training or workshop in-person.

TimeSlips Engagement Parties are joyful gatherings for anyone interested in learning or sharing TimeSlips’evidence-based techniques for memory loss with others in their family or community. Created with and designed for family caregivers (but fun for anyone), at an Engagement Party, guests learn simple techniques to improve communication and creatively engage friends, neighbors, or family members (biological or chosen) in shared moments of imagination with no right or wrong answers. Engagement Parties are perfect for those looking for a fun and interactive way to bring creative engagement to others. They can be led in-person or online with anyone who might need an invitation back into the lives of those living with memory loss and those who care for them.

In addition to these free resources, TimeSlips recently released the Creative Care Imagination Kit, acompanion resource to Basting’s book, Creative Care. The Imagination Kit is a beautifully designed resource created for use wherever caregivers need it. Each kit contains 15 story prompt cards and 15 “Beautiful Question” cards, featuring questions like “If your feet could talk, what would they say” or “What is the mostbeautiful sound in the world.” These open-ended questions invite a user to respond in any way they like andreinforce the belief that there are no wrong answers in creative engagement. Combined with a variety of story prompt cards, beautiful questions can be used to imagine stories together, either in a one-to-one exchange or as part of an activity that a whole group can enjoy. The kit also includes a keepsake journal in which users can record stories, responses, and memories made by using the kit together.

The Friends and Family resources were developed with the support of families and professional caregiversand with funding from the Ralph C. Wilson, Jr. Foundation. For more information on these resources andhow to share them with caregivers in your community, contact Andrew Morton, Project Manager-Friends and Family Resources, at andrew@timeslips.org.