Teepa Snow, MS, OTR/L, FAOTA
Teepa is a dementia expert who trains and consults for agencies, facilities, and families. Her training as a master’s prepared occupational therapist as well as her extensive and varied work and teaching experience provides Teepa with a unique perspective of how the brain controls our body and our behaviors. This history has provided her a perfect neurosciences background to explain how a brain disease like dementia affects a person.
She started her career as a direct care giver over 35 years ago, an NA before there was a “C”. She has taken care of two family members with dementing illnesses. The combination of her been-there-done-that skills and her formal training give Teepa the credibility and experience to help caregivers with tried-and-true solutions.
Teepa’s philosophy is based on years of making mistakes and perfecting a positive approach to caregiving. Her teaching style integrates facts about the brain and how it works, or doesn’t work in the case of dementia, with expertise in adult learning principles. She is able to go in and out of character as a typical person with Alzheimer’s to demonstrate common issues and problems and to help care providers learn new ways of thinking and managing themselves for better outcome sand results.
Teepa is an advocate for those living with dementia and has made it her personal mission to help family and professional caregivers better understand how it feels to have dementia so they too can be better caregivers. Since her lectures are usually done in the first-person – as if she is the person with dementia – her training gives the audience a first-hand understanding and experience with the disease and a hands-on opportunity to try out new skills in a safe and fun environment.
