Make-believe Matters. The Moral Role Things Play in Dementia Care

Residential dementia care increasingly makes use of objects and artificial environments to support people with dementia, whose cognitive abilities are challenged, in intuitive (sensual and emotional) ways. Many of these objects have aspects of make-believe (e.g. social robots, therapy dolls, virtual-reality, prints for exit camouflage). People with dementia are especially vulnerable to loss of trust. In close co-operation with professionals in care and design, this project investigated when the use of objects that involve make-believe supports the personhood of people with dementia. And when must it count as manipulative and deceitful. The project developed guidelines and workshop material to evaluate these questions on a case to case basis. The data consist of written fieldnotes (in Dutch), audio files of interviews (in Dutch) and video's and photographs.