‘Buddies’ was set up by people living with dementia and memory issues and is run by people with dementia and memory issues.
The aim of the group is to meet others in similar circumstances who want to share their experiences of living with memory loss and have their voices heard.
Come along meet chat, share, laugh and stay involved! First hot drink is on the house.
The group meets once a week at a local pub in Leamington Spa from 2pm to 4pm on a Thursday. Next meeting will be held on:
Thursday 13th April 2017
For more information please contact – Hazel 07748383023 or Jill 07747632042
Warwickshire marked this year’s Dementia Awareness Week by holding a Dementia Support and Services Event on Friday 20th May in Nuneaton Newtown Centre.
It is estimated that by 2025, over 11,000 people aged over 65 will be living with dementia in Warwickshire. By 2020, around one fifth (18%) of those aged over 80 in Warwickshire are projected to have dementia.
The impact of dementia can be far-reaching, but by increasing awareness and understanding of this condition we can make a real difference to improving the lives of people living with dementia and also support those who care for them.
The 20th May informal drop-in event offered a chance for Warwickshire residents to find out more about services available to support people with dementia and their loved ones, in different areas of our county.
Partners worked together to develop a full and varied programme including holding a market stall for local providers as well as offering a number of engaging taster sessions such as story making, memory box making, Dementia Friends or an ‘ooomph’ chair based exercise class.
A range of providers attended the event to promote their service offer, these included for example: Alzheimer’s Society, Age UK, Coventry and Warwickshire Partnership Trust, Millbrook Healthcare, the Herbert Art Gallery, Citizen Advice Bureau, Dementia Action Alliance, Warwickshire Library Service, South Warwickshire Foundation trust and a range of care homes and home care providers.
The event was well attended and a number of people commented that it was very helpful in terms of networking and finding information about dementia service provision in Warwickshire, talking to service providers about support available to individual families and participate in taster sessions, or having a health check done.
Each attendee was provided with a ‘goodie bag’ containing a number of different leaflets with information signposting people to a variety of support organisations working with people with dementia.
The event also saw the re-launch Warwickshire’s refreshed Living Well with Dementia Strategy 2016 – 2019; a copy of the Strategy is available on Warwickshire County Council’s website: www.warwickshire.gov.uk/dementiastrategy.
Continued promotion and delivery of Dementia Friends information sessions will form part of the Strategy’s delivery plan. There are currently approximately 11,500 Dementia Friends in Warwickshire and our aim is to increase the number of Dementia Friends in the county to at least 30,000 in the next four years.
Dementia Friends is a national initiative run by the Alzheimer’s Society focused around raising awareness of dementia and to help build dementia-friendly communities. Becoming a dementia friend is about understanding a bit more about dementia and the small things that can help people with the condition. You don’t need to already know someone with dementia to become a dementia friend.
What’s on at the Dementia Support and Services Event
Friday 20th May 2016 – 10am – 3pm
Newtown Centre, Newtown Rd, Nuneaton, CV11 4HG
As part of Dementia Awareness Week from 15th – 21st May, Warwickshire County Council will be holding a free event to showcase the support services available to people living with Dementia in Warwickshire. Everyone is welcome, but particularly people living with dementia, including family and carers from across Warwickshire.
Meet with over 20 support services at the event including Age UK Warwickshire, Alzheimer’s Society Warwickshire, Coventry and Warwickshire Dementia Action Alliance, Fitter Futures Warwickshire and more. You can visit the stands at any time between 10am – 3pm.
Please see below schedule of information sessions which will take place at the event. Please book your place at the sessions when you arrive, places are available on a first come, first served basis.
Download the poster– please display the poster and help promote this event within your community.
Bidford Dementia Café is the initiative of the Patients Participation Group (PPG) linked to the Bidford Health Centre and fully supported by the Practice Partners.
The aim of the Café is to provide a safe and homely environment to help and support people with memory problems / dementia and their families, carers, and volunteers to enjoy a relaxing and enjoyable morning by socialising and participating in activities and sharing experiences with each other.
The Café is run by volunteers on a weekly basis every Monday (except Bank Holidays) between 10.30 am and 12.30 pm on a “drop in” basis, at Westholme Court in Bidford on Avon, B50 4AL. The Café is free of charge and refreshments are available. It is open to residents in Bidford and the surrounding areas.
There is a programme of activities which includes socialising, playing various games, musical and photographic memories, entertainment, presentations and various forms of exercise. You will be able to just sit and chat or join in with some social games and activities. We want you to feel a warm, friendly and social atmosphere and leave feeling that you have had a nice time.
In addition carers will have the opportunity to meet each other in order to get the much needed support they need. There will also be regular monthly group meetings for the carers including specialised talks from professionals.
As the Café gets more established then more activities and events will be added to the programme for everyone. We want to get to know you and understand your requirements in order to provide the help and support that everyone needs.
You can tell us what support you are looking for, it may be, for example:
Coping strategies · Coping with stress · Benefits · Homes checks · Home Help and Carers Short Break Services · Planning the future · Power of Attorney · Wills · Support services and signposting
We are here to help in any way we can, there is no need to feel alone!
For further information Telephone: Wendy on 0771 364 8716 (if no reply please leave a message and your call will be returned as soon as possible)
Are you a manger or senior worker within a residential care or nursing home that supports people with dementia?
Do you want to improve your knowledge of person centred dementia care?
Would you like to learn how to use evidenced-based, practical ways to support people with dementia to enable them to live well?
If you have answered yes to any of these questions, you will be interested to hear about a programme of training that Warwickshire County Council have invested in for care home staff.
We recognise the need to improve and sustain the quality of dementia care across the County. We are offering FREE accredited training modules for care and nursing home staff who work with people with dementia. These sessions will be delivered locally at training venues across Warwickshire by Professor Dawn Brooker’s team from the Association of Dementia Studies Worcester University.
There are two different courses, which are all are underpinned by the concept of VIPS, a framework that helps translate the values of person centred care in practice and stands for:
V = Values people – Values and promotes the rights of the person
I = Individual’s needs – Provides individualised care according to needs
P = Perspective of service user – Understands care from the perspective of the person with dementia
S = Supportive social psychology – Social environment enables the person to remain in relationship
Dementia Leadership Course
Leading person centred services for people living with dementia.
A 4 day course, delivered in 2 blocks of 2 days of face-to-face workshops and a work-based assignment. This Course is aimed at care home managers who want to develop their dementia specific leadership skills and who deserve recognition in this challenging area of work.
Course Content
Develop an understanding of person centred care and the application of the VIPS framework
Developing a person centred workforce
Person centred care management
Risk, safety and empowerment
Working with families & volunteers working with organisations and communities
Specialist practice in dementia (person centred care)
A 6 day course delivered face-to-face and work-based assignments over a 3 month period, in 2-day blocks. This course is aimed at people who work directly with people with dementia and have responsibility for the development and delivery of their care plans on a day-to-day basis, such as Activity Coordinators, Specialist Nurses, and Senior Care Officers.
Course Content
Undertaking individualised person centred assessments, utilising cognitive capacity, strengths and needs, taking into account physical health needs in the context of dementia, maximising freedom & choice.
Developing care plans based on the enriched model of dementia care
Working with families to learn more about relationships, activity, occupation and fun, creating life-story and getting to know the person with dementia
Helping people who have extreme distress and complex needs, assessing and managing risk and safeguarding vulnerable adults
Developing supportive and interesting environments and Telecare
Remember, these two unique and useful training courses are being provided totally free of charge, so we are expecting a high level of interest and advise booking a place early to avoid any disappointment.
This opportunity is being offered to support providers to achieve common standards in line with the recent contractual changes and fee increases. These changes stipulate that 1% of your fee rate is now specifically linked to performance in-line with these standards.
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:
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:
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
The Warwickshire Service Directory is a web based Directory available for anyone to use who is looking for information about local organisations, groups and agencies that provide activities, advice, services and support to residents of Warwickshire.
Furthermore, the Events Calendar enables you to see what’s going in your local area and where appropriate you can search on specific organisations to see their events/activities solely.
In addition to looking for services, this is also a great opportunity for organisations providing services to showcase their services completely free of charge. So if you want to register with the Directory, you can use the link below
As most things change and evolve, so is the Warwickshire Service Directory – Following consultation, we are moving to a more picture-based look-and-feel to the site, making it more user friendly and including links to Online Self Support.
If you want to explore the Directory and find out more, you can access via the Social Care pages on the Warwickshire County Council website or on the link below:
We are especially keen to seen Providers offering dementia-related and dementia-friendly services, activities and support sign-up with the Directory so get in touch now.
Care Fit for VIPS is a free, online development toolkit for managers of care homes.
Built on the VIPS Framework developed by Professor Dawn Brooker at the University of Worcester’s Association for Dementia Studies, it gives care homes the tools to develop person centred care for people with dementia. We were originally commissioned to provide a paper-based toolkit, but with the support of care home managers, family carers, Care Quality Commission, the commissioner and others, it evolved into an online toolkit, which was able to guide people confidently to the wealth of online resources, while sorting the wheat from the chaff.
There are three elements to the toolkit:
A self-assessment tool
This enables users to think about and review how person-centred their care is currently:
A resource directory
This links to free and paid-for resources online from across the world:
An online improvement cycle
This aims to give care homes a way of planning, recording and following through on their improvements:
Each tool has been welcomed by care homes, and we’re also delighted that people are finding it user-friendly and easy to access. Here are some comments from Care Home Managers:
‘Will make information searching so much easier – Thank You!’
‘Lost track of time and spent all afternoon using it!’
‘Very easy to understand’.
This autumn and winter, we’re putting on briefing sessions around the region for care homes – including around 25 half-day sessions for those in Coventry and Warwickshire – to encourage even more homes to discover how easy and exciting it can be to move towards person-centred care.
To book a place on the care home briefing sessions call:
At Forrest Medical Centre in Coventry, we have been keen over many years to improve our rate of detection of patients suffering from dementia. To do this we ideally need a test that can be used with a consultation and preferably one that can be used by different members of the primary health care team.
Originally we had the “Mini Mental state” test, but this takes such a long time to administer that it did not fit in well with the pattern of work in a general practice – so, in the 1990s, when we when we learnt of the 6 item Cognitive Impairment Test (6CIT), we changed to using this as it was much quicker and simpler to use.
Details of how to do the Mini Cog Assessment are below:
The Mini Cog is a quick, sensitive screening test for dementia, which can be administered by either trained or untrained staff
It consists of 2 parts: a 3 item recall test and a clock-drawing test.
At the start of the test, tell the patient that you are going to give them 3 words, which you will ask them to repeat straight away and then again after 1 minute (during which time you will have done something else, or had some other conversation to distract the patient).
The 3 words normally used are: APPLE, PENNY, TABLE (an alternative would be car ball man)
The number of words correctly recalled is given as a score: 0, 1, 2 or 3.
The patient is then asked to draw a large circle and fill in numbers as on a clock face, then add hands to the clock indicating a time of 8.20.
The drawing is scored as “normal” or “abnormal”
The patient can be judged to be demented* if:
the 3 item recall score is 0; or
the 3 item recall score is 1 or 2 and the clock drawing test abnormal.
Using the Mini Cog, the rate at which we accurately diagnosed new cases of dementia rose more than 50% from its previous baseline and has remained higher. The trials of the Mini Cog showed that it could be reliably used by staff who did not have medical training, so we have been happy to encourage other members of our team to use it.
We would encourage other GPs and their teams to make use of this test and would be interested to hear from other practitioners who have seen diagnosis rates improve as a result of using the Mini Cog.
The Coventry and Warwickshire Living Well with Dementia Partnership is a partnership made-up of Local Authorities, NHS, Private and Voluntary Sector organisations dedicated to:
raising awareness of dementia;
improving post diagnosis support for everyone with a dementia diagnosis and their carers; and
improving the quality and access that social care and health practitioners have to local, service-related information about dementia.
The Coventry and Warwickshire Living Well with Dementia Partnership currently consists of representatives from:
We are always looking for new partners and there are a number of ways you can get involved.
About this Blog
This blog is managed by Katherine Herbert and Paul Coxon, from Warwickshire County Council, and will be used to run news stories and raise awareness of events around dementia from across the Partnership. Expect posts covering a wide range of audiences from people with dementia and their carers to practitioners working in Social Care and Health.
Got a story that you would like to tell or a topic that you would like us to cover? Then Get in touch.