Kate Swaffer

Kate Swaffer (born 1958) is an award winning campaigner for the rights of people with dementia and older persons globally, and for dementia to be managed as a disability,[1] to ensure equal access to the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). She was awarded Australian Of The Year for South Australia in 2017,[2] which as recognised by Ita Buttrose on Studio 10, and the 2018 winner of the Global Leader, AFR 100 Women of Influence in Australia.[3] Swaffer is also a humanitarian, and an international speaker with Saxtons.[4]

Kate Swaffer
Born	1958 (age 62–63)
Nationality	Australian
Education	Master of Science
Alma mater	University of Wollongong
Occupation	Author, Academic, Campaigner for Disability rights
Years active	10
Known for	Dementia and Disability Campaigner
Awards	UoW Alumni Award for Social Impact (2016) SA Australian Of The Year (2017)

Swaffer was diagnosed with dementia shortly before her 50th birthday in 2008.[5] Subsequently she completed a Bachelor of Arts in Writing and Creative Communication and a Bachelor of Psychology. She has completed a Master of Science in Dementia Care (2014) and is also one of eight co founders[6] of Dementia Alliance International, a global advocacy and support group for people living with dementia which was launched on 1 January 2014.[7]

Swaffer was born in a farming community on Eyre Peninsula in 1958. She is married, and has two sons. Her first career was nursing, having worked in dementia and aged care and then operating theatres; she is also a retired chef having run her own hospitality businesses for ten years. She subsequently worked in health care sales.[8]

Swaffer is the only Australian to have been a full member of the World Dementia Council and is an elected-board elected board member of Alzheimer’s Disease International, serving her second term. Her (incomplete) PhD at the University of Wollongong and University of South Australia focused on economic stigma. She is an Honorary Associate Fellow with the Faculty of Science, Medicine and Health, University of Wollongong, a Fellow of The Royal Society for Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA), and an International Fellow at the University of East Anglia. Kate completed a Master of Science in Dementia Care with a Distinction in 2014.

Notably, in her human rights work, Swaffer is the first person living with a diagnosis of dementia to give an invited keynote speech at an agency of the United Nations, the World Health Organisation (WHO), at the First Ministerial Conference on Dementia in March 2015, where she demanded human rights, access to the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) for all people with dementia, and a balance in research between care and cure on the global stage. These demands were included in the WHO Final Call To Action, and human rights were included in the Global action plan on the public health response to dementia 2017 - 2025, adopted at the World Health Assembly in May 2017.

Swaffer is an influential activist for human rights in aged and dementia care, for dementia as a disability, and has always stood up for social justice as an advocate or in volunteering roles, and still volunteers for the homeless in South Australia, and the Bereaved Through Suicide Support Group (SA) Incorporated.

Swaffer is also a widely published academic, author and poet. Her first book on dementia, What The Hell Happened to My Brain?: Living Beyond Dementia, and her second dementia book Diagnosed with Alzheimer’s or another dementia, co-authored with Associate Professor Lee-Fay Low were both released in 2016, the latter currently being updated for an international audience.  Swaffer's first two volumes of poetry were published in 2012 and 2016.

Swaffer has played a vital role in creating the new narrative of dementia globally, as well as empowering new dementia advocates, also inspiring and has actively supported the development of numerous new national or local Dementia Working or Advisory Groups. Swaffer is passionate about the power of research, having become a researcher herself, but strongly believes in common sense, which may not always have evidence-based research to support it.

Swaffer has also been instrumental in bringing human rights to the fore in dementia and aged care, including recognition in practice for dementia being recognised as a disability through published articles and books, presentations and global campaigning. Since 2010, Kate has given more than 1000 invited key note presentations on a number of topics, not only in the field of dementia and human rights, but on disAbility, discrimination, stigma, dementia-enabling design principles, language, Inclusive Communities, Prescribed Disengagement®,[9] Models of care, Information Technology, Advocacy and Activism, dementia policy (local, national and global) and loss and grief.