Busy times

With the new academic year underway it feels like the next round of conferences is also gearing up. Here’s a quick overview of what we’ve got coming up over the next few months:

• Probably just ended by the time you read this, but we presented on ‘The social citizenship of people living with dementia’ as part of Dementia UK’s Admiral Nurse Online Forum.
• In mid-October we’ll be well-represented at Alzheimer Europe with two presentations and a poster covering three different projects. One presentation is on ‘Investigating how to sustain community-led dementia support groups long term: The Get Real with Meeting Centres project’ while the other is on ‘Crossing the Line: co-producing resources to support family carers providing personal care’ and the poster covers ‘Meeting Centres in the UK: the UK National Consortium and the impact of national dementia strategies’
• Also in mid-October there will be a presentation on ‘Meeting Centres for people affected by dementia: you never know what’s round the corner’ as part of the Evidence Based Practise Conference: Leaders in their field and inspirational research careers.
• In early November you’ll find us at UK Dementia Congress (UKDC) with a whole variety of presentations, posters and symposiums (symposia?) covering different projects. A few details are still being finalised, so to avoid missing anything out we’re not giving a list here. However, we need your help with one aspect. As reported in a previous blog we had a great response from Meeting Centres getting involved in creating a family blanket. A few squares didn’t quite make it to us in time to be included when the blanket was shown at the Get Real event in mid-July, and several Meeting Centres have opened since then, so we thought we’d see if we can bring a bigger blanket to UKDC. We’ll add in the squares that got a bit delayed, and we’re inviting all Meeting Centres who didn’t or couldn’t get involved last time to send in their contributions. The same rules apply as last time (8 inch x 8 inch squares, up to three per Meeting Centre, all different media welcome), so send them to Jennifer Bray, Association for Dementia Studies, University of Worcester, Freepost WR333, Henwick Grove, Worcester, WR2 6ZA, by the end of October. Don’t forget to say which Meeting Centre they’re from!

We’ve also got around a dozen articles in progress, submitted or accepted but not yet published by various journals, so hopefully we’ll see some progress with those alongside our conference presentations. We’ll do our best to let you know about published articles via our social media channels, so make sure you’re following us on twitter @DementiaStudies and on Facebook @adsuow