Caroline Bartle Consulting

03/06/2026

Sooo excited to be in Sydney first time ever! feels like a cross between New York and London. Was greeted by some lovely birds at the airport.

Here to present my doctoral research

26/04/2026

1 oral presentation
2 posters
3 weeks away from home
4 sleepless nights
5 conversations that made the whole trip worth it
6 countries
7 days in London
8 flights
9 really good connections made
10 reasons not to leave the UK

What an adventure.

I hope you all enjoyed my posts from the Alzheimer's Disease International conference 2026, it was a gooden. I will be following up on the posters and talks for weeks to come.

You might have noticed… nothing on my posters or talk. The very dreaded imposter syndrome took hold.

I’m waiting for my 'coming out' moment when I finally cross that line — watch out world.

And yes… I remain a proud cattle-class traveller ✈️

I’ve always struggled with the optics of plane classes that visible divide in such a small space. I can’t quite get my head around spending thousands more on a bigger seat when that same money could make a real difference elsewhere.

So here’s the bit I’ll say out loud…

if you’re flying business class to talk about dementia care, but not paying your carers properly — something’s off.

I leave you with a pic of my local, local beach. I've swapped the pub for a beach and a million other reasons to be heading home.

10/04/2026

🌍 Today I'm heading to Lyon, France, to join my colleagues at the ADI World Alzheimer's Congress and I'm feeling every emotion at once.

Excited to be reunited with incredible people doing this work across the globe, and to hear our CEO Catherine Hall speak.

Nervous too, if I'm honest flying feels scary right now, and I'm leaving Auckland with one eye on the cyclone tracking our way.

On Tuesday I'll be presenting in Bellecour 1 at 11am. The session is titled National Associations: Raising Awareness and Advocacy — and there's a certain irony in that.

We will be at a conference talking about raising awareness. But awareness is exactly the methodology we need to move beyond. Changing hearts and minds is not enough if we don't change what people actually do. Real change requires us to think very differently about how we design learning and how we understand the places where care happens.

The research on dementia education has been telling us the same story for years. The evidence is mixed at best. Traditional training moves knowledge into people's heads, but too rarely into their hands, their habits, or the systems around them.

That is why I am so proud to be sharing the innovative approaches we are developing at the Alzheimers New Zealand Dementia Learning Centre approaches designed not just to inform, but to genuinely change the way people work and the impact they have. Chief among these is KORA Project years in the imagining, grown from research, practice, and possibility, and now fortunate enough to have received funding to become a reality. We believe it will reimagine dementia education.

I also have two posters at the conference one on my doctoral research into organisational learning in dementia care, something I have been wrestling with and building for at least nine years, and one on the Dementia Design Framework, developed alongside some truly excellent colleagues. By far the most exciting project I've worked on to date.

How I am going to pull all of this together and get there in time with everything in hand I honestly don't know. But for now, I'm going to go with the flow. 🌊

22/03/2026

“You can’t hurry love…”
Sounds like a song by Phil Collins those of you old enough to remember that. But what has this got to do with dementia support?

“You simply can’t rush love.”

It comes from a piece of writing by Clover and it has stayed with me.

She describes a care worker arriving late, stressed, needing to get to the manager quickly. The fastest route is straight through the lounge. What happens next I won’t spoil.

What struck me is something we know, but rarely name. On average, people walk at about three miles per hour, yet in dementia care we often allow the system to dictate a very different pace. In doing so, we unintentionally outpace the person we are there to support, creating environments of distress often then labelled as “challenging behaviour.”

Tanya puts it plainly: much of this distress arises from a person’s reaction to being rushed or misunderstood by a world that operates at a different, often frightening pace.

And the challenge is this how do you slow down in a system that gives you no time?

That care worker didn’t have more time. They were under pressure. What they did was shift how they entered the space.

Perhaps it’s not always about more time, but about how pace is held in small moments pausing before approaching someone, making eye contact, matching walking speed, and allowing space for a response rather than filling every moment with silence. Small things, almost invisible, but they change the experience of care.

But there are limits. And that’s where systems, funding, and leadership come back into the conversation. This is also where practice leadership matters because it helps us notice these moments, hold onto them, and make them part of how care is actually done, not just how it is described.

We often replace the word “love” with “person-centred care” or “compassion,” but as Tanya writes, love may be the only language that remains fully intelligible.

It is a beautiful and thought-provoking piece. I’d really encourage you to read it.

In a system-driven mechanics of modern social care, time is often seen as a limited resource to be managed, monitored, and squeezed. For social care professionals supporting people living with dementia, a culture of effi...

07/02/2026

Do you prefer a bath or a shower? How often do you usually wash your hair?

05/02/2026

Imagine a stranger asking you to take your clothes off.

Imagine that stranger saying they'd get into trouble if you didn't comply.

This is a familiar story for people who live with dementia.

Refusal of personal care is sadly common and one of the least honestly talked about.

Clean is not the same as cared-for.

The blog asks a confronting question and considers what happens when we don't when the reality of care goes unexamined, restrictive practice becomes normal, systems override autonomy, and the carers who bear the emotional burden of intervening are left on their own.

Tanya Clover tells Elizabeth's story.

In 2018, a Dutch research team did something simple but profound. They analysed 32 studies, looking at what actually determines whether the relationship between a care worker and the person they're caring for becomes gen...

31/01/2026

As humans, we have been sitting around the fire telling stories since the dawn of our time. Sharing our stories, each as unique as our fingerprints, offers a way to connect with those around us. We tell and retell our st...

13/01/2026

Why Your Organisation Should Develop Its Own Dementia Care Competencies