Three Meeting Centres in three days

By complete coincidence recently we did three Meeting Centre visits in three days, but all for very different reasons. Due to the logistics of trying to travel to various locations and having a relatively small team that works across a range of projects, we don’t get a chance to visit many Meeting Centres in person, so this was definitely an anomaly for us!

Firstly, we went to Leominster Meeting Centre where we met with someone who is hoping to develop a new digital resource to help people affected by dementia. It’s still in its early stages so we can’t give any details, but after hearing what it’s all about we were able to help them share their idea with a few of the members and carers to get some feedback. Despite some stiff competition from a wonderful Indian dance session that we didn’t want to take people away from, I think the developer went away with plenty of food for thought and ideas to try out. It was also a great chance to meet the new Meeting Centre manager who recently took over following the retirement of the previous manager.

Dementia Action Week – what’s coming up?

It’s nearly Dementia Action Week (15^th-21^st May) so we thought we’d share a few events that we’re aware of. Please note that we are not endorsing any of these, just helping to share the information.

We’ll be doing our bit here at the University of Worcester by running a dementia awareness and information session for staff on 17^th May and also having a stand in the St John’s campus reception area to share our knowledge with staff and students throughout the day.

We’ll also have a stand at an event organised by Age UK Worcester and Malvern Hills which is taking place 16th May 10am-4pm at the Guildhall in Worcester. We don’t have a flyer to share, but for further details contact kirsty@ageukwmh.org or 07974 414056.

In Leominster there are various activities taking place all week organised by Dementia Matters Here, including an art exhibition, conference and picnic. More details are shown in the image below, together with contact information if you want to find out more. We’ll be at the conference on 16^th May with a stand, and are looking forward to hearing the presentations taking place.

Meeting Centres family blanket

Sometimes we have slightly crazy ideas, and this week it’s time to tell you a bit more about our latest one!

When we see photos from Meeting Centres being shared on social media, we often see lots of arts and crafts and creativity taking place, and one recent comment from a member about what they would like to do was “we could make a blanket”. Suffice to say, these sorts of things get us thinking, and we’ve come up with a plan to create a Meeting Centres UK family blanket.

We’re inviting Meeting Centres from across the UK to work with their members and carers to create squares that represent their Meeting Centre and what it means to them, send them to us, and we’ll bring them all together to create a blanket.

As luck would have it, we’re hosting an event to share the findings from our ‘Get Real with Meeting Centres’ research in mid-July, which will be the perfect opportunity to display the blanket and celebrate how far Meeting Centres have come.

Evaluating two online platforms – the final push!

In previous blogs we’ve told you about two digital platforms, Know Your Place Worcester and Life Stories Herefordshire and Worcestershire, that look at different aspects of heritage work. As a very quick recap:

• Know Your Place Worcester uses old maps and photos to explore what Worcester looked like in the past.
• Life Stories Herefordshire and Worcestershire enables you to create your own life story book capturing stories and photos from your past and present, and share it with others if you choose.

Since our earlier blogs there have been some developments to let you know about. The overall Worcester Life Stories project that drove the creation of the platforms has produced a book ‘Worcester Life Stories – in the words of local people’. Additionally, the Life Stories Herefordshire and Worcestershire platform has expanded their ‘life packs’ to cover topics that are specific to Hereford with more still to be added.

Herefordshire Dementia Voices

We’ve been remiss in not telling you about one of our current projects, so we thought we’d use this week’s blog to put that right!

First off, the Herefordshire Dementia Voices project isn’t actually a project we’re delivering. That’s being done by Dementia Matters Here(fordshire), and our role at the Association for Dementia Studies (ADS) is to be a separate group sitting alongside the project to evaluate its effectiveness. Before saying what we’re doing, it probably makes sense to tell you a bit about the project itself.

Herefordshire Dementia Voices – a bit of background

People with dementia and their families have been some of the most adversely affected by the pandemic in terms of health and well-being and social isolation. With funding from the National Lottery Community Fund, Dementia Matters Here are delivering the Herefordshire Dementia Voices project to put people with dementia in the lead and help identify what they need and want in terms of support, both in the light of the pandemic and moving forward.

Making a change

One of the current projects that we’re involved with at the Association for Dementia Studies (ADS) is called ‘Herefordshire Dementia Voices’. The project is being led by Dementia Matters Here and aims to help identify what people affected by dementia need and want in terms of support in the county, both in the light of the pandemic and moving forward. Multiple activities are – and will be – taking place to find and hear the voices of people affected by dementia, including interviews, focus groups, questionnaires, Dementia Friends Sessions, events, blogs, newsletters and support to establish dementia friendly communities and support groups.

At ADS, our role is to evaluate the overall effectiveness of the project to explore to what extent the voices of people affected by dementia have been identified and heard. As part of that evaluation, we’re using a ‘Theory of Change’ approach. This is a new approach for us, so it’s been a bit of a learning process (like getting to grips with soft systems for the Get Real project!), but this week we had our first workshop with members of the Herefordshire Dementia Voices Steering Group to start looking at how Theory of Change can be applied to their project. We’re not going to try and explain it in any detail here, but ultimately we wanted to explore not just what is happening in the project and changing as a result, but also how and why things are happening and changing. It encourages us to consider how change happens in both the short-term and the long-term, and the myriad of factors that affect change for projects such as this (complex social interventions). It’s an iterative and recursive process that involves mapping the various elements of the project in a visual format, getting input from relevant stakeholders to make sure that we’re capturing everything, and refining our view of the project through their real-life experiences. This was just the first of three planned workshops to help form our initial project map, with further workshops taking place later in the project as it progresses.

Introducing CAMBUS

This week we’d like to let you know about an exciting new initiative that has started in Herefordshire and Worcestershire. The Coffee and Memory Bus (CAMBUS) scheme currently comprises two minibuses/vans, which will travel around Herefordshire and Worcestershire reaching out to people in their community and providing a safe and friendly space for people to enjoy a tea or coffee, have a chat, find out useful information, and even start creating their own life story on the Herefordshire & Worcestershire Life Stories platform.

It can sometimes be difficult for people to access support services or find out about what is available to them, so this initiative aims to take that support and information to people where they are. Maybe they have concerns about their memory or a relative’s memory and aren’t sure what the next step is. Maybe they just want to be a bit more social by having a drink and a chat with others. CAMBUS provides those opportunities.

5 blogs you may have missed

Our blog site aims to release a new post every week, but we realise that it’s not always easy to keep up with them. So this week we’re going to take stock and do a quick recap of five blogs that you may have missed from the past year.

1. Exploring issues relating to housing and care provision for LGBTQ older people – As it’s currently Pride Month, this seemed appropriate. It provides an overview of a webinar organised by the Housing and Dementia Research Consortium where three presenters shared their views and experiences of some of the issues facing LGBTQ people with dementia and LGBTQ older people more widely. It was a well-attended and well-received webinar, so definitely worth another look.

Easy ways to make your business more dementia friendly

The Coronavirus pandemic has shown that many businesses and organisations can successfully adapt to different circumstances and put (sometimes expensive) measures in place to help people use their services safely. As we hopefully return to a more normal situation, we’d like to encourage those businesses and organisations to think how they can improve their physical and social environments to be more dementia friendly, rather than just removing Covid-related signs and returning to what they had before.

We’re not proposing everyone undergoes a complete refurbishment (unless you really want to!) or spends a lot of money, but just gives a bit more consideration to how they can support people affected by dementia, either as customers or members of staff. Whether you’re a café, restaurant, shop, pub, bank, leisure centre, office, train station or whatever, here are a few inexpensive ideas for you to take on board. You might also find that they benefit many more people, not just those affected by dementia!

You’ve come to the right place

Our April Meeting Centres webinar focused on the physical environment and how Meeting Centres can be made more dementia friendly. It was a real team effort, consisting of four short presentations. The session started with Professor Dawn Brooker MBE acting as chair and setting the scene about why the venue for a Meeting Centre is important and what you should look for when exploring potential options.