Helping with personal care may become something that you do if you are caring for someone with dementia. Washing, bathing, personal grooming and dressing can become difficult for a person with dementia to manage.

It can be a sensitive and personal issue for the person. They may also not be comfortable with someone touching them or helping them with things that feel personal or intimate.

For you as a carer, it can be hard or upsetting to see the person you care for go through outward changes in appearance and personal hygiene.

Often, reminding the person you are caring for how to wash or dress, can lead to stress, upset and arguments. Thinking about the reasons the difficulties might be happening, can allow you to put in place practical solutions.

You should also remember that there may be factors at play other than dementia, such as pain or tiredness. 

Here are some suggestions about what may help with some personal care tasks.

Some of the difficulties the person might experience include:

• Forgetting where things like clothes or shower gel are kept
• Wearing clothes that are dirty, forgetting they have been worn before
• Struggling to operate the shower or do up a zip
• Becoming stressed when trying to wash, dress or perform other personal hygiene jobs

• Collect up dirty clothes and put them in the wash
• Lay out clean clothes the night before; or have a smaller collection of clothes on display
• Put out clothes that are easier to put on, for example clothes with elasticated waists, without buttons or zips
• Take off wardrobe doors
• Be flexible. If the person doesn’t like what you have put out for them to wear, try something else
• Turn the shower on for them before they get in
• Use simple instructions or demonstrate how to do something. 
• Don’t rush

If the person is having difficulty physically accessing the shower, then there may be pieces of equipment or adaptations that would help. 

When dealing with personal care tasks, like helping someone to wash or dress, it is important to make the experience as comfortable as possible. 

Approach the conversation with care. If the person has started not wanting to wash or dress, then try telling them you’ve got them a nice new shower gel you think they’ll like, or a new shirt or tie bought especially for them.

To make them feel more comfortable you can:

• use warm, soft towels
• play music
• dim the lights
• use a calm, soft voice

It is helpful to remember the person’s identity when you are giving personal care like washing or dressing.

Clothes, smells and accessories are part of our identity. It can make a big difference to how someone feels if you lay out clothes that they like to wear or help them put on makeup or do their hair, if that is what they used to do for themselves.

You can make it a joint activity. It may be easier for the person to cope with the situation if they feel like they are part of it and have some choices. So you can offer choices in what they wear or talk through the steps of what you are doing together.

While most of us view washing and changing our clothes each day as an essential task, for a person with dementia it may be better to take a more relaxed approach.

It’s OK if the person you are caring for doesn’t wash or wears the same clothes for a day or two. However, there is a basic level of cleaning that we must all do to our bodies to keep us healthy, so if the job is becoming too much for you, you should ask for help from a relative or friend or from social services.

Social services can help you to work out what the problems are for the person and come up with ways to help. They can also guide you on any equipment that might make things less difficult and how to access funding for it.