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Coventry, Dementia Portal Launch, DementiaPortalCW, Health Care. Warwickshire, Living Well with Dementia, Social Care, Write-up
It’s been a hectic few weeks since we launched the Coventry and Warwickshire Living Well with Dementia Portal, which is one of the reasons for the delay in sharing some of the pictures and memories from the event.
First-things-first and in case you have missed it, you can find the links to different areas of our new website below:
- Living Well with Dementia Website Homepage
- Do you provide support to someone with dementia
- Have you had a diagnosis of dementia
- Find out how to spot the signs and symptoms of dementia
- Find out about a healthy lifestyle can reduce your risks of developing dementia
The Launch event took place throughout the day on Thursday 25th October in the Council Chamber and ante chamber at Shire Hall, Warwick.
In the morning, invited guests attended networking and formal presentations on the website and partnership. We were very impressed to see such a great turn-out, with over 50 people attending the formal launch presentation, and would like to sincerely thank everyone who attended. There was a pleasing buzz to proceedings throughout the day and some brilliant follow-up feedback suggesting that those present found it a useful morning. We certainly did!
There were several presentations:
Cllr Jose Compton, Dementia Champion for Warwickshire County Council, and Cllr Ann Lucas, Health and Wellbeing portfolio holder at Coventry City Council who spoke on the issues of dementia across Coventry and Warwickshire and who celebrated the good working arrangements between the two authorities in providing joined-up information, advice and services across both counties:
Chris Lewington, Head of Strategic Commissioning at Warwickshire County Council, who spoke about the Dementia Strategy and the high-level of partnership working and user engagement that had led to the creation of the portal. Chris also explained that the portal is a living site that would be added-to and developed over time:
I gave a brief run through of the website and social media applications and how the content had been arrived at, answering a few questions from the audience along the way:
Finally, Tony Robinson, Warwickshire County Council’s Transformation assembly ambassador, how previously cared for someone with dementia and is a volunteer for the Alzheimer’s society gave an eloquent speech on the problems he faced in accessing the right information at the right time when he cared forsomeone with dementia. Tony hopes that the website will be able to alleviate some of those issues for people in the future:
Those of you familiar with this blog will recall Tony has already had a guest post on here talking about the Alzheimer’s Society Early Diagnosis Pilot. Since writing that post, we are pleased to say, Tony has been selected by the Society to be the face of their Christmas Media Campaign.
Following the presentations and question and answer session, there were further networking opportunities and chances to look at the stalls in the ante chamber from a variety of providers and services such as books on prescription and the Alzheimer’s society.
As morning gave way to afternoon, Katie and I were kept busy with a steady stream of people who had come to take a look at the portal and collect some of the dementia awareness material during the advertised drop-in sessions, which kept us busy for the remainder of the day.
On behalf of the Partnership, we would like to extend kind thanks to everyone who attended on the day and made it the lively, useful and informative event that it was.
What other people have said
Throughout the launch event and since, we have had some great feedback from Twitter in relation to the portal. Here are some highlights:
Read this conversation on Twitter
You can also watch the Warwickshire 60 second news edition that was dedicated to the Portal Launch: Dementia Partnership lend a helping hand to people with dementia:
So, What’s next?
We will continue to review and improve the Partnership website, building on the fantastic networks that this event helped reinforce. We will also be distributing our dementia awareness material to sites across Coventry and Warwickshire and will continue to engage key partners to ensure that people are signposted to the portal at an appropriate point in their journey with dementia.
Want to show your support for the Partnership?
It would be great to see as many people as possible wearing our lovely dementia awareness wristbands. If you live and Coventry or Warwickshire and would like one of your very own, drop us an email with your name and address and we’ll send you one out in the post: promotionsandpublication@warwickshire.gov.uk