Ask any family living with dementia which part of the day they dread and almost all of them say the same thing: four o’clock onwards.
What works is unglamorous. Keep the light levels up as the daylight goes, because the change in light is doing more of the work than the hour is. Move the most demanding tasks of the day to the morning. Keep the same person, the same chair and the same order of doing things.
What does not work is novelty. A new face or a new activity at five in the afternoon reliably makes things worse, which is why we schedule memory support with a fixed caregiver at fixed times and resist changing either.
If the household only affords a few hours of paid care a week, put them here.
