Meet Barbara Speedling
An inspirational and motivational speaker, Barbara is an author, educator and management consultant at the forefront of person-centered care.
An innovator with more than 30 years of practical experience within the adult care community, she is the expert providers turn to when they want to ensure that the services they provide meet not only the physical needs of their residents, but their emotional and psychosocial needs as well.
Working from a core belief in the dignity and individuality of all people, Barbara has helped countless adult care communities implement her unique training and education programs that:
- Improve the quality of care for those living with Alzheimer’s disease
- Bring better quality of life to such residents, as well as to those who live with disease-related dementia, a mental illness, or a brain injury
- Encourage staffers to use newly developed cultural empathy to form better relationships with those in their care
- Offer new strategies for promoting harmony among increasingly diverse, younger and assertive populations
- Open new pathways to maintaining regulatory compliance
- Support leadership and organizational development
In addition to her degree in healthcare administration, Barbara is an accomplished musician and artist. She uses those talents to develop new and creative ways of reaching out to those who are cognitively diminished. She was also certified in 2015 by Dr. Susan Wehry as a Master Trainer for the OASIS education program for improved care of residents with dementia.
The author of three books devoted to common sense advice for meeting the holistic needs of an increasingly diverse and challenging community, both Why is Grandma Screaming and Toward Better Behavior: Yours Mine & Everyone Else’s are now widely distributed to staff members at community, residential and long-term care facilities across the country and in Canada.
Blessed with boundless energy and tireless enthusiasm, Barbara also volunteers in her free time to offer caregiver education and support to families who need it most. Through her affiliations with local artists and musicians in her native New York City, she also arranges therapeutic music, dance and wellness programming that improves the quality of life for local seniors.