Warwickshire’s 10,000 Dementia Friends Challenge continues

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#DementiaChallenge, Alzheimer's Disease, Alzheimers, Alzheimers Month, awareness materials, Call to arms, Dementia, Dementia Friendly Communities, Dementia Friends, Friend, Peer Support, Support

My name is Claire Taylor and I work as a Health Improvement Lead for the Public Health team at Warwickshire County Council.

I became a Dementia Friend in 2013 after attending a one hour Dementia Friends Information Session. At the end of the information session, we were asked to think of a dementia friendly action to do after the session. This could range from wearing the Dementia Friends badge, further increasing our knowledge about dementia, finding out more about services and support for people with dementia, being more patient and understanding when out and about in the community, keeping in touch with a person with dementia, supporting carers of people with dementia, or spreading the word on social media and encouraging others to sign up. No action is too big or too small.

My action was to consider ways I could support the creation of more Dementia Friends throughout Warwickshire. In October 2014, with the full support of the Director of Public Health in Warwickshire (Dr John Linnane), I organised for a local Dementia Friends Champion to deliver a Dementia Friends Information Session to the Public Health Team. After a thoroughly engaging and interesting session, the entire team became Dementia Friends!

The photograph below shows our team proudly displaying our Dementia Friends badges:Dr John Linnane is on the front row, second from the right. Just behind him (wearing glasses) is Cllr Bob Stevens who is the Chairman of Warwickshire County Council for 2015-16.

Dr Linnane’s dementia friendly action was to spread the word about Dementia Friends and encourage other organisations to get involved. This included the Clinical Commissioning Groups and District and Borough Councils in Warwickshire to name a few.

The enthusiasm for Dementia Friends inspired three members of the Public Health team (including myself and my manager, Dr Charlotte Gath) to become Dementia Friends Champions. We received training and various resources to enable us to deliver Dementia Friends sessions.

We had plenty of interest for Dementia Friends sessions and so within a few weeks each of us had delivered our first information sessions. The feedback was brilliant. Staff commented that they found the information sessions ‘really interesting’ and ‘thought provoking’, and that they ‘learnt a lot’. This feedback inspired me to consider what else I could do to support the creation of Dementia Friends.

Earlier this year, Warwickshire’s Dementia Friends Challenge was launched; it aimed to create 10,000 Dementia Friends in Warwickshire. As part of the Challenge I have had the privilege to deliver Dementia Friends Information Sessions to a number of different groups and teams.

I have been fortunate to work with other Dementia Friends Champions from Warwickshire (there are about 20), who are so enthusiastic and committed to supporting people to live well with dementia and creating dementia friendly communities.

We now have over 9,000 Dementia Friends in Warwickshire, which is a fabulous achievement in just a few months! In Warwickshire, there are estimated to be over 7,500 people living with dementia and so there are now more Dementia Friends in Warwickshire than people with dementia.

So, becoming a Dementia Friend is a really positive thing to do, and does not take much time – either an hour if you attend an information session or just five minutes if you sign up online.

You can become a Dementia Friend through any of the following ways:

1. Attending an hour long Dementia Friends Information session. Everyone who attends a session and wants to become a Dementia Friend will get a Dementia Friends badge and information card. You can book a place by visiting the Dementia Friends website http://www.dementiafriends.org.uk and searching for a local session.
There are sessions open to the public in Warwickshire during World Alzheimer’s Month (September 2015). These are as follows:

4th September – 9.30-10.30am
The Jubilee Centre, Alcester, Jubilee Hall, (off St Faith’s Road), Alcester, B49 6AG

18th September – 10-11am
Atherstone Library, Atherstone, CV9 1AX

19th September – 2pm-3pm
Anya Court Care Home, Rugby, 286 Dunchurch Rd, Rugby CV22 6HX

2. Groups may want to hold a Dementia Friends Information session, perhaps as part of their regular meeting. Sessions last up to an hour. If you would like to find out more about this please email: dementiapartnership@warwickshire.gov.uk

3. Organisations can register with Dementia Friends, to access a suite of resources and information aimed at helping members of the organisation understand dementia and how it may affect a person. Registering will also enable you to keep a record of the number of staff in the organisation who have signed up as a Dementia Friend. Find out more on the Dementia Friends website, Dementia Friends website

4. Watching a short video on the Dementia Friends’ website Dementia Friends website Go to ‘Watch our online video’; Enter your details and watch the video to become a Dementia Friend. Then enter your address to get your FREE Little Book of Friendship – full of more helpful tips and ideas – and your Dementia Friends badge through the post. It takes just five minutes.

Please show your support by becoming a Dementia Friend –
why not sign up for an information session or sign up online today!

Thank you.

Claire Taylor

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Businesses of Warwickshire: becoming dementia friendly

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awareness materials, Bedworth, Call to arms, gp surgeries, Health, health and wellbeing, Leamington, Nuneaton, Rugby, Stratford, Warwick, Warwickshire, warwickshire county council

As you will know from our last post, Warwickshire County Council and key partners are committed to Warwickshire becoming a dementia friendly community. You can read more about that here: Warwickshire Committed to becoming a dementia friendly community.

We are thinking more about how we make Warwickshire dementia friendly and that means including as many organisations, businesses, groups and individuals from across the county as possible, which brings us on to today’s post.

We have a range of dementia awareness materials such as leaflets, bookmarks and wrist bands which we have already distributed to a wide variety of local authority and health locations such as libraries, GP surgeries and pharmacies. The feedback that we have received on these materials has been really positive and we are now we are hoping to see them distributed widely across the county to help promote the living well with dementia message.

How can you help?

Do you own or run a business or organisation in Warwickshire that is regularly visited by members of the public? Would you be interested in having a selection of our dementia awareness materials in your reception areas and other public areas?

Please don’t think we are only interested in seeing our materials in businesses and organisations that have a high number of visitors who are over the age of 55. Dementia is a problem for everyone, not just the elderly and everyone, from the very young to the very old, can play a vital part in helping to make Warwickshire a dementia friendly community.

What materials are available?

We have two attractive flyers; one covers the major signs and symptoms associated with dementia to enable people to spot these in themselves and others and the second covers how a healthy lifestyle may contribute to reducing a person’s risk of dementia.

We also have dementia awareness bookmarks, featuring information on the Partnership, links to our online content and the highly-innovative dementia Portal. Finally, we have some rubber wrist bands featuring the Partnership logo and link to the Portal.

what do we do next?

If you would like to have a supply of our dementia awareness materials, please send an email with the name and address of your business or organisation to The Dementia Partnership and we will send you a supply through the post. We will also add you to our mailing list so you can get the latest news about our progress towards being dementia friendly and how you might be able to get involved more in the future.

We are really hoping for a good response to this, as this will help our aim of making Warwickshire a better place for people with dementia to live and look forward to hearing from You.

We need your help developing website content for people living with a dementia diagnosis.

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Alzheimers, Call to arms, Carers, Dementia Diagnosis, Dementia Portal, DementiaChallengers, DementiaPortalCW, Living Well with Dementia

We are developing additional webpages for the Coventry and Warwickshire Dementia Portal, written especially for people with dementia in the early stages, and we need your help.

We are asking for your ideas about what would be useful content for the webpages. It could contain practical tips and strategies to help people to remain independent, to help cope with stress and low mood, engage with others socially and/or learn new skills.

Please help us to develop the webpages by completing this short questionnaire. Simply click on the link below and you can complete the questions online:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/145dementia897

We will use this important information to help us to develop the content and tools offered. All ideas and comments will remain anonymous and confidential.

Thank you for your help. If you have any questions, please contact Dr Emmie Fulton (Project lead) on 024 7688 7171 or emmie.fulton@coventry.ac.uk.

You can find out more about these developments by visiting this longer post from Emmie: Dr Emmie Fulton Asks – Dementia: Time to Inspire and Instil Some Hope?

Dr Emmie Fulton Asks – Dementia: Time to Inspire and Instil Some Hope?

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Alzheimer's Disease, Call to arms, Dementia, Dementia Diagnosis, DementiaChallengers, Have you had a dementia diagnosis?, Information for people with dementia, Website Design

One of the goals of the current ‘Coventry and Warwickshire Living well with dementia’, which campaign launched in October 2012, is to raise awareness and reduce stigma about dementia.

We all have different levels of knowledge about what dementia is and it means different things to each of us. People living with dementia are sometimes thought as those requiring high-levels of formal care, struggling to remember where they are, to recognise those around them and to engage in their own life or their future. In fact, this common perception fails to recognise that many people with dementia, especially those in the earlier stages, may still be working, doing voluntary work, starting new activities, learning new skills, actively engaging in the community and learning new ways to manage their illness.

‘’I believe that an important reason patients go downhill the way they usually do is because society sends them a devastating message that their lives are already over.’  – Morris Friedell: Dementia Advocacy and Support Network International (DASNI).

My name is Dr Emmie Fulton, I am a Health Psychologist and I work for Coventry University and Public Health NHS Warwickshire. I Recently began working on projects to support people following a diagnosis of dementia. I soon realised how little I knew. Like many people, the image I had of a person with dementia was really that of someone in the late stages of the illness, and I had no idea about the very different ways that the illness can affect people. What struck me more than anything else was the fact that the majority of support and information available is aimed at carers and those supporting people with dementia. Although I recognised the great importance of this, I couldn’t help but wonder why there was so little written and provided for a person with dementia themselves. This only seemed to reinforce the mistake that society can make that a person with dementia is no longer able to be actively involved in their health, their future, their life.

If the expectation is that you will not be able to learn new hobbies, do things for yourself, and take control of your own health, is it any wonder that some people with dementia feel hopeless and become depressed and withdrawn? The purpose of ‘Coventry and Warwickshire’s Living Well with Dementia’ campaign is to challenge these views and to promote the message that with help and support, people can live well with dementia. As part of this campaign, an information portal for dementia has been developed that aims to provide comprehensive information to people with dementia, their carers and the wider public about dementia. Linked to this we plan on developing additional web-pages written especially for people with dementia in the early stages and we are interested in hearing your thoughts about this.Recent Government reports tell us that they are committed to ensuring people receive a diagnosis of dementia as early as possible. This enables people to access information and support in a timely manner. The aim of the additional web-pages is to provide a positive message about what people can do for their physical and mental well-being, to help them to live well with dementia.

“We need to focus on ….. daring to try to recover skills, develop new talents, and create a new future invested with meaning and hope”. – Christine Bryden, in her book: ‘Dancing with Dementia’

We need your help to develop the webpages and are asking for your ideas about what would be useful content for the web-pages. It could contain practical tips and strategies to help people to remain independent, cope with stress and low mood, engage with others socially or learn new skills.

“You can’t stop the waves, but you can learn to surf”  – Jon Kabat-Zinn, 2004

Information about what dementia is and sign-posting to local services and support is well provided for by the Alzheimer’s Society and the new Coventry and Warwickshire Living Well with Dementia Portal. Therefore, the webpages will not focus on this specifically; however it will link to these sources. We realise that many people with dementia do not use the internet and may prefer not to receive support in this way. However we are aiming to provide people with a range of options in terms of how they access information and hope that as society ages, those receiving a diagnosis will be more familiar with the internet, and therefore this method of support will become more and more relevant to people. We welcome all ideas and thoughts. The most important thing for us is that it will provide something hopeful and useful to people living with dementia.

Please help us to develop the webpages by completing this short online questionnaire. Simply click on the link below and you can complete the questions:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/145dementia897

We will use this important information to help us to develop the content and tools offered. All ideas and comments will remain anonymous and confidential.

Thank you for your help. If you have any questions, please contact Dr Emmie Fulton (Project lead) on 02476 887171 or emmie.fulton@coventry.ac.uk

Tony Robinson Introduces the Alzheimer’s Society Early Diagnosis Pilot

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Alzheimer's Society, Alzheimers, Call to arms, Coventry, Dementia, Dementia Challengers, gp surgeries, health and wellbeing, primary care trusts, Warwickshire

Following on from our last post on tools for improving Dementia Diagnosis rates, Tony Robinson, a member of the Dementia Delivery Strategy Board, talks about a new early diagnosis pilot from the Alzheimer’s Society:

The Alzheimer’s Society Campaign and Media group, of which I am a member, have been one of two groups chosen nationally to undertake an eight month-long pilot project aimed at improving diagnosis rates for dementia.  It is almost certain that Warwickshire will be one chosen area for this pilot but given the close ties, on many levels, with Coventry, the likelihood is that both areas will be considered as a whole.

Current estimations of people with dementia in the two areas tell two very different stories.  Presently, Warwickshire has twice as many people diagnosed with dementia as Coventry. The estimated rate of increase for cases of dementia over the next ten years for Warwickshire is 37% compared with only 19% for Coventry.  Current levels of diagnosis are 39% for Warwickshire and 43% for Coventry.

First, we wish to obtain the support of all stakeholders, including MPs and Councillors at all levels of local government.  We also wish to consult with members of the Primary Care Trusts and Health and Wellbeing Boards.  We believe the Joint Strategic Needs Assessments (JSNA) could play a part in gathering data from this exercise.  Key to success will be discussions with GPs and Memory Clinics to find out where there are problems and look at innovative ways of solving them.

Much of the initial work will be concentrated on getting the leaflet “Worried about your Memory” to as many households as possible by whatever means we can, with magazines and newsletters, and backed by media coverage.  The Guideposts Trust has already promised to deliver around 5000 copies with their newsletter to carers.  The leaflet is also freely available in GP surgeries and we will send it to pharmacies, dentists, opticians and libraries as well.  We make no apologies for people receiving more than one copy.

We would like to visit area forums and social groups to reinforce the message.  We believe the public has a vital role to play, if they are told how to recognise possible symptoms such as short term memory loss, and to act with discretion in persuading family members, friends, etc to have a memory check.  We do not want to encourage “dementia vigilantes”, rather Good Samaritans.  Too many people have “walked by” in the past.

We want to achieve an improvement, but this may not be apparent immediately after the 8 month period.  It is essential that we follow up this work, even without the funding.  Otherwise we may create a blip followed by a decrease in diagnosis rates.  Any improvement must be maintained and built on.

All our data gathered so far has been done by trawling the internet.  Any piece of information, particularly on minority social groups, would be helpful. If you have information to share, please contact Phili Milton, co-ordinator for the project, her email is phili.milton@alzheimers.org.uk and Telephone: 01926 888899.

About Tony Robinson

Not to be confused with the Tony Robinson of Baldric-fame, though both have similar experiences of caring for someone who was living with dementia.

Tony lives in Nuneaton and took early retirement in 1999 to look after his wife, Isobel, who was suffering from depression at the time, but was later diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease.  Isobel went into residential care in 2010 and died in July last year, which left Tony with a big void to fill.

Tony had already come to the attention of Warwickshire County Council, through his work on The Carers Partnership, amongst other things, and has also been able to devote more time to doing work for The Alzheimer’s Society.

Tony describes himself as currently playing “catch up” for the last 12 years that he spent supporting his wife and now enjoys international travel (having been to Russia and South Africa in the last year), walking, most major sports, and attending concerts at Birmingham Symphony Hall.  Equally important to Tony has been rebuilding a circle of friends.  Tony maintains that ‘when you are are involved with supporting someone with dementia, you really find out who your true friends are.

Further Reading

Find out more about the Mini-Cog Diagnostic Test for Dementia 

Coventry Health Joint Strategic Needs Assessment 

Warwickshire Joint Strategic Needs Assessment