Memory loss is something Cumberland County Public Library employees Carla Brooks and Amanda Dekker are intimately familiar with. Both had grandparents diagnosed with dementia — a broad term for memory loss and loss of other cognitive skills.
The diagnoses make them passionate about providing programming dedicated to improving and maintaining older adults’ memories, including the library’s latest offering: memory kits.
“This is something meant for a caregiver or a family member to share with their loved one who might be starting to show or has definitely been diagnosed with some kind of dementia,” Brooks, Cumberland County Public Library’s division manager for programs, explained. “You can show them the picture and get them talking about it. It gets them reminiscing.”
Each kit has a different theme, ranging from seasons to pets to decades to farming. They include 40 hand-sized “companion cards” and a DVD featuring images associated with the kit’s theme. Caregivers can use the cards alongside the DVD or on their own.
Questions accompany the images to help caregivers engage their loved ones. The kits also feature activities using the entire set of images.
There are 15 total kits distributed across the library system’s eight locations. Caregivers can request and check out any kit. If the kit isn’t at their desired pick-up location, the library will provide a free courier service to deliver it. The company that makes the memory kits, MEternally, also posted the kits’ DVD videos on YouTube.
The kits have been available since July. They came about after several Cumberland County Government officials, including Glenn Adams, current county commissioner, and Faith Phillips, library director and assistant county manager for environmental and community safety, requested them and other programming for older community members.
Dekker, the east regional branch manager for the county library system, had attended a Public Library Association Conference seminar about working with older adults with memory challenges around the same time and saw the need for memory-centered offerings at the library. She happily took on the responsibility of the kits and created those programs alongside Brooks.
“This is important,” Dekker said. “We need to help our older adults in our community and be a support for their supporters too, because I think people forget about them.”
The kits will become especially important in the coming years. The number of older Americans diagnosed with dementia or its symptoms is expected to double in the next 40 years, totaling about 1 million by 2060 according to a study published in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Medicine.
The study found Black adults were at a higher lifetime risk of developing dementia compared to white adults, particularly for earlier onset dementia. This can be attributed to a number of factors including socioeconomic disparities, discrimination, higher rates of chronic comorbidities and other structural issues. Dementia cases for white adults are expected to double while they could triple for Black adults.
Dekker and Brooks hope that the library can help cover that gap by providing services, like the memory kits, that only require a library card to access. They both believe the library must provide resources and events that reach everyone in the community.
Despite the initial success at their unveiling over the summer, the memory kits’ check-out rate has slowed. Brooks believes the lack of knowledge about the kits is to blame.
“I don’t think they [the community] realize what all we offer,” Brooks said. “I think the old view of a library is just coming in, checking out books and going home.”
Both library employees encouraged residents curious about the kits to check them out at their nearest library, even if they don’t have dementia or other memory challenges.
“Maybe somebody just wants to reminisce,” Brooks said. “They don’t have any memory issues. They’re welcome to check them out.”
CityView Reporter Morgan Casey is a corps member with Report for America, a national service program that places journalists into local newsrooms. Morgan’s reporting focuses on health care issues in and around Cumberland County and can be supported through the CityView News Fund.
