Innovative dementia projects improving quality of life for people in North Kirklees
During Dementia Awareness Week (4th-10th July), South West Yorkshire Partnership NHS Foundation Trust will be raising awareness of its groundbreaking initiatives it has launched in North Kirklees to help older people living with dementia, as well as their carers and families.
During Dementia Awareness Week (4th-10th July), South West Yorkshire Partnership NHS Foundation Trust will be raising awareness of its groundbreaking initiatives it has launched in North Kirklees to help older people living with dementia, as well as their carers and families.
Dementia Awareness Week is an annual event run by the Alzheimer’s Society that aims to raise awareness of dementia. This year the Alzheimer’s Society is asking people to think about the simple things they can do to make life for someone with dementia more manageable and enjoyable.
The Trust, which provides specialist mental health and learning disability services in the North Kirklees area, has a number of innovative projects taking place across North Kirklees which are already improving the lives of people with dementia, their families and carers.
The Changes Carer Education programme is just one of these projects. The programme aims to provide support, advice and information for people in North Kirklees who are caring for a person with dementia.
The programmes run for 6 weeks and provide carers with vital information that allows them to provide the care which a person with dementia needs. Carers are given advice on how to cope with stressful situations and information about agencies they can turn to for support. It also gives carers the opportunity to contact a health professional should they require further support after the programme has come to an end.
The programme focuses on supporting carers to recognise a person’s strengths and abilities with dementia, not weaknesses. It is believed that developing a carer’s knowledge and understanding of dementia is also beneficial for the person with dementia as carers have the confidence to provide the care needed.
The Changes Carer Education programme began in North Kirklees in 2003 and continues to evolve in light of new information and developments made within the field of dementia. Carers who have attended have called it ‘life saving’ and stated that they now feel more able to cope in their caring role for longer.
This work and other examples of the Trust’s innovative care is detailed in a regional dementia innovation directory. The directory gives people across the region, from commissioners to carers, a flavour of what can and is being achieved to enable people to live well with dementia. The Trust’s senior planning manager Mary Duggan worked to pull together all of the information for the directory on behalf of the Yorkshire and Humber Improvement Partnership (YHIP).
Lesley Rollins a general manger for the Trust’s older people’s services in Kirklees said, “Dementia Awareness Week is all about raising awareness of dementia and the support available for those who live with the condition, as well as their carers and families. It is a great opportunity for us to promote the pioneering work that’s been going on in the Trust’s older people’s services recently, that makes such a difference to the quality of life of people with the dementia, as well as their carers and families. I hope that these projects continue to have a positive impact on dementia care and that more and more people benefit from them. We are developing and improving care for people with dementia all the time and I look forward to even more innovations being developed in the future.”
For more information about Dementia Awareness Week visit www.Alzheimers.org.uk/Awareness