"Uplifting Dementia"
 Leah Bisiani - MHthSc/Dip Bus/Dementia and Aged Care Consultant
 

Mission

To be front of mind in the delivery of supportive, dynamic, and quality advice, contributing to a compassionate and dignified future which honour’s enabling approaches to health and wellbeing for all persons touched by dementia.

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Vision

A commitment to making a profound difference by creating changed perspectives, through reconceptualizing dementia.

To enrich lives, by valuing each person’s voice and uniqueness, inspiring and shaping respectful and meaningful life experiences that uphold equality, diversity, and inclusivity, whilst empowering and uniting people with dementia to live their best lives.

This may be attained through enabling approaches that maintain personhood, preserve relationships based on human connection, and preserve purpose in a manner that is personally significant.

Goals

 My goals are underpinned by an ethos of recognising that dementia does not mean losing oneself, seeing and honouring the person first, and acknowledging the need for exceptional and responsive approaches to care, thus maximising life quality.

Biography

Leah Bisiani is a highly skilled Registered Nurse Division 1/MHlthSc/DipBus/Dementia and Aged Care consultant, with more than 35 years’ experience in aged /dementia care.

 

Self-development has been a priority, and Leah has simultaneously undertaken and completed considerable qualifications and management/corporate employment within the aged care industry, establishing a knowledge and experience base placing her at the forefront of the industry.

 

Leah has a passionate dedication towards Best Practice and consistently utilizes her progressive approaches to obtain the highest possible quality of life for people living with dementia.

Her work aims at redefining and rethinking dementia, whilst embracing a more expansive view of the person who lives with a diagnosis of dementia, through the provision of care based on remaining assets, rehabilitative support for acquired cognitive disabilities, and a unified voice of advocacy that upholds individual autonomy. This, her primary area of expertise, has focused on excellence, and enabling models of care that are responsive to the specific needs of people living with dementia.

 

Leah has successfully demonstrated how reconsidering the medical paradigm and creating environments in which persons living with dementia continue to thrive, facilitates continuation of life based on recognition of self, and the valuing of individual uniqueness.

 

Leah won both the 2010/11 Lend Lease ‘Australian’, and ‘Global’, Award for “Excellence in Innovation” for her person-centred models of care, designed for people living with dementia within residential aged care. These awards recognised Leah’s contribution to the aged care sector and specifically to the lives of those living with dementia.

 

Leah distributes and publishes her evidence-based studies, and papers, within the medical field, aged care sector and community, and in 2011, her thesis, “Doll therapy: A therapeutic means to meet past attachment needs – a case study approach”, was published by Sage Publications. She now continues to write key documents and articles for significant dementia journals and various medical organisations/websites globally.

 

Leah’s ground-breaking and highly effective work, and increased profile, has inevitably resulted in numerous, ongoing invitations over the years to lecture at leading national and global conferences.

 

As her proficiency expanded and her reputation as an innovator was acknowledged, Leah commenced working predominantly in consulting, clinical advisory, research, education/learning, and development.

 

Having now developed herself as a leader in the field, Leah strives to continue inspiring aged care services and local communities to create meaningful, shared experiences that transform dementia understanding and expand compassion.

 

Leah’s life’s work and vision effectually transforms cultures and philosophies of care, providing a powerful voice that confronts current practice, forges an approach that removes all forms of segregation by acknowledging everyone has the right to “Freedom of Expression”, and consequently upholds the human rights of all people living with dementia.

 

Her pioneering revelations have enabled people living with dementia to attain maximised and enriched lifestyles, and furthermore, successfully empowered, and motivated humanity to embrace her dreams of change.

 

As per the words of Ghandi, Leah believes:

 

“Be the Change You Want to See in the World”.