Importance of community

On Thursday after returning from a student group meeting I entered the dining hall and saw Mrs Black who I had previously done a referral with the week before. She immediately recognised me and smiled and I went to speak to her. Though she still fidgeted with things around her and seemed a little nervous she also seemed a lot more rested and settled. After she had finished her lunch we walked around the centre for a while as she expressed a preference for walking and viewing the different rooms than sitting and chatting.We talked about how she was finding her time at the centre and she seemed to have taken great pleasure at the fact that she had met someone there who she knew from years ago.This reinforced to me the importance of community and remaining in the community and how this should be an important element of social service provision. She still also repeatedly worried about whether her husband would come back to get her but did not seem as positive that he wouldn't as she had done the previous week. When in fact he did come back she connected the fact that he'd come back and the fact that I had repeatedly assured her that he would and seemed to have a new sort of trust in me.
During the afternoon we went into one of the rooms and looked t some old coins and 'famous faces' from the past and she seemed to enjoy greatly telling me who each of them were and why she liked them or disliked them. I saw her visibly relax as she did this and she only became a little bit confused occasionally in the moving from one card to another. Again I saw the benefits of reminiscence work and this time with the use of props to stimulate. I feel it contributed to her general sense of well-being in the centre and to deepen my understanding of the level of memory she still has and also her general interests.
In future something I will do differently or be aware of is to make sure that she does not become too dependent on me alone. At one point she said something along the lines of 'You're my guardian angel' which though said in jest made me conscious of the possibilty of this kind of dependent attachment forming and I hope to encourage her more in her further integration into the community at this centre.