‘Yes means yes!’

“We all do it. Why does it suddenly stop when we end up in residential care?”

The “it” is sex; the speaker Gwenda Darling. “Just because I have a dementia diagnosis doesn’t mean that I’m not a sexual being,” she tells delegates attending the International Dementia Conference in Sydney in September.

Darling – a long-time advocate for people living with dementia – was one of four participants in a panel discussion about sex, consent, and cognitive impairment.

When it comes to...