About Wayne Caron
On August 21, 2007 Dr. Wayne Caron suddenly passed away. Dr. Caron left us many gifts from his life to grow and thrive in his absence. One of those gifts was the innovative collaborative learning community for persons living with dementia, the Family Caregiving Center. In his honor, we have now renamed our center to honor the work of an amazing man, and his years of dedication to changing and improving support for people who live every day with dementia.
Throughout his career, Dr. Caron has shown enormous dedication to each diverse population and client he worked with. Dr. Caron found most passion and success working with the people he began his career with. As a teen volunteer in St. Therese Nursing Home, Wayne learned the significance of true communication, through visiting with older residents. This basic principal laid the foundation for his clinical interventions and research over the last 20 years of his life.
Dr. Caron's interest in dementia was re-invigorated after working with Dr. Pauline Boss to assist in completing her research on Ambiguous Loss. Joining his passion for research, and his passion for working with people with dementia, was the perfect equation to further enhance the skills, knowledge and instinct Dr. Caron naturally possessed.
In 1999, Dr. Caron and several graduate students in the Department of Family Social Science launched the first Saturday morning session of the collaborative learning community. Dr. Caron invited a handful of families to join him for two hours in some basic dementia focused education, and a facilitated support group session. The Wayne Caron Family Caregiving Center grew out of an identified need, but required no fee for service, and has always run on volunteer labor and donations.
How is it possible that this work could continue purely on volunteerism, even by that of the director, Dr. Caron? Similar to the work of Dr. Paul Farmer, Dr. Caron's passion, and commitment to the people living day in and day out with dementia was relentless, and the people he touched knew that his waking hours were devoted largely to working to help them get through the disease. He did this either through therapy sessions, training students in how to work with families in his teaching, his work with the Collaborative Learning Community, and developing research which will ultimately change the face of dementia care, and the experience of the caregiver and the person receiving care.
Dr. Caron was often quoted as saying, “My success is your success.” Wayne knew that in order to have success, you had to have influence with a number of moving parts.
Wayne taught everyone around him to learn. The most important part of his therapy, and his practice was directed by this philosophy. Everyone has the ability to learn. Wayne was one of the few professionals who held the believe that even persons with degenerative brain functioning can and do learn. He believed that learning does not die with brain cells, learning is an inherently human experience. To rob any human of that, is to rob that human of their humanity. Most of all, Wayne taught everyone he came in contact with, client and colleagues alike, how to reinvigorate that personal passion for learning, and how to ultimately connect with our humanity.