Thinking outside the box?

What exactly does thinking outside the box mean? I have heard this term many times and repeated it on occasion. What it means to me is not using conventional guidelines when trying to address solving or helping with something. It can lead to very innovative and effective ways of solving problems or dealing with issues. It can be incredibly difficult to change the ways people think about how to deal with things but many, many people living with dementia are trying to get those that make policy, professionally care for people, governments and non-profits to change the way they think about people living with dementia. People need to start thinking in terms of how can we enable those living with dementia to function better. How to help them help themselves instead of just taking over everything. How can we enable people to stay at home? Why aren't we using more of the available technology to enable people with dementia to be more independent? Why don't we make things so they DO work for someone with dementia instead of saying they can't do this or that so we have to make sure they don't have the opportunity. We need to start treating people with dementia more like others with different disabilities instead of people who are somehow mentally ill and completely incompetent. If someone looses the ability to walk there are tremendous resources to overcome that disability and continual innovation to make it better. Do you see the same thing happening with the millions upon millions of people with dementia? I definitely don't see that happening with any frequency in the U.S.! I ask you, no matter what part of the world you live, to work towards changing this. Thank you for reading and thank you for considering this change that is vital to those of us living with dementia. Please help us by improving quality of life and never warehousing people.