Abstract
Welcome to 2015 and issue 1 of our 14th year in production. The field of dementia has moved so far in that time. So far in fact that the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, David Cameron, issued a Challenge on Dementia (Department of Health, 2012) that refers to people living with dementia as citizens, creates the vision for dementia friendly communities that ‘understand how to help’ and promises ‘better research’ where those living with dementia are active contributors to their researched experience. In internationalising this vision, a recent World Health Organization (2012) report has also squarely positioned dementia as a public health priority and placed the rights of people with dementia centre stage; for example, the right to live in the community, the right to take part in activities and the right to be involved in communal life (p. 47). With citizenship comes a more inclusive language: it is not ‘us’ and ‘them’ taking part in everyday civic life anymore, it is simply ‘us’. If we listen carefully, echoes of the writings of the late Professor Tom Kitwood can be clearly heard.
We begin this issue with an Editorial from Kate Swaffer, who also wrote an Editorial for the Dementia journal at the end of 2014, and as a person living with dementia, we are highly fortunate to capture her insights and commentary. There is no more authentic voice. We encourage you to ‘check out’ Kate’s highly influential blog (http://kateswaffer.com/daily-blog/) and we remain keen to support the contribution of people living with dementia and their care partners to the Dementia journal whenever possible. As we move forward in 2015, we have a special edition in issue 3 on mild cognitive impairment guest edited by Professors Stephen Katz and Kevin Peters at Trent University in Peterborough, Canada. We are hopeful that this special edition will provide a new lens from which to view mild cognitive impairment and we are certainly excited by the articles, and the adopted conversational approach, that so far inform this collection.
Finally, before we hand over to Kate, we would like to publicly thank Rosie Sheridan at Sage publications for all her help in taking the Dementia journal forward over the last few years. Rosie was the Dementia journal’s Senior Publishing Editor and much of her work was located ‘behind the scenes’ so to speak; however, her constant energy and enthusiasm for the journal, coupled to an effortless professionalism, will be greatly missed. Thank you. As an Editorial team, we look forward to working with Helen Ashton who has taken over Rosie’s role.