Powys
Dementia Network event - Newtown 2019
By Jen Hawkins & Jackie Newey - Health & Wellbeing / Mental Health Information Officers
By Jen Hawkins & Jackie Newey - Health & Wellbeing / Mental Health Information Officers
On Wednesday 17 July we attended the latest
Powys Dementia Network event at the Football Club in Newtown. It was organised
by our colleague Sue Newham, Engagement Officer in the team, and attended by a
huge variety of organisations and individuals. These included Dementia Matters
in Powys, Alzheimer’s Society Cymru, Powys Libraries, Hafren School children,
Powys Teaching Health Board and people living with dementia to name but a few.
As always we will try to capture some of the
spirit and information from the day below, but if you would like to find out
more and / or attend future events then please get in touch - further details
at the end of the post.
The last Network event in Brecon in February
this year was also captured for the blog in Powys Dementia Network event - Housing.
 |
| Alzheimers 40th Annivesary |
Alzheimer’s
Society & Dementia Connect - Kerry Phelps, Alzheimer’s Society Cymru
Kerry Phelps opened her presentation with some
thought provoking statistics about dementia, stating that 1million people live
with dementia in 2021, a figure that is expected to rise to 2 million by 2050.
The Alzheimers Society celebrate their 40th birthday this year and in that time
have learned a lot about how best to support people living with dementia.
In 2017 the society rolled out their “New Deal Dementia Strategy,” with their mission being to “transform the
landscape of dementia forever.” The strategy comprises three pillars, a new
deal on support, a new deal on society; focussing on changing conversations
around dementia and a new deal on research; with the biggest investment in
research to date. By 2022 they aim to
“reach out to everyone from the time of diagnosis to offer help and deliver a
universally accessible support and advice service.”
Dementia
Connect is their gold star service through which the new deal
dementia strategy is being rolled out, at present it supports 1 in 10 people
with the aim to eventually be able to support 7 in 10 people. The central ethos
of the strategy is focussed on person centred support, planning to empower
people to take control of their care.
Brecon
Library: Introducing the RemPod & the Past-Times Picnic Hampers - Andrew
Jones, Powys County Council
Read & Remember is a new Powys Libraries initiative
drawing on the value and the power of a shared oral experience - it’s all about
sharing reading aloud creating nostalgic connections and sharing experience.
Originally it was set up as an all-community activity, but as they worked with
it library staff found that people from the dementia community were the most
engaged. As a result staff built in extra resources and so the Past-Times
picnic hampers were created filled with nostalgic items to trigger memories.
The hampers are themed - people can choose
from the Seaside, Transport, Animals, Gardening and Wildlife. Each hamper is
full of nostalgic items which twig off memories from people’s past. The hampers
can be used at events and have already proved successful at a number of care
homes. They work well with relevant reading material. There is no cost involved
and hampers can be reserved and transported between libraries in the county
with advance notice, with one member of staff in the north of Powys and one in
the south to transport them.
The hampers were followed by the RemPods -
amazing pop-up banners featuring large scale photographs of relevant scenes. On
the day we enjoyed taking selfies in front of the Seaside RemPod - the only
thing missing were the actual ice creams! Other RemPods
Powys Library Service is keen to work with
care homes, local clubs and societies to broaden the audience and give people
would not usually consider reading aloud some confidence.
Another top tip passed on by Andrew and Agnes
from the Powys Library service is the carers library card. Anyone who cares for
someone with dementia in a personal or professional capacity, family members
and friends of people living with dementia are all eligible for a carers card.
This allows you to take out up to 20 books at a time with library fines or fees
incurred.
Planning
a Dementia Meeting Centre in Newtown - Deborah Gerrard, Dementia Matters in
Powys
Deborah, the new Chief Officer at Dementia
Matters in Powys, gave an update on plans for a dementia meeting centre in
Newtown. The first Meeting Centre in the county opened in March
2017 in Brecon. Funding from the
National Lottery Community Fund has now funded two further centres in
Llandrindod and Ystradgynlais. Newtown will be No 4.
Dementia meeting centres are staffed by
community development officers, facilitators and volunteers.They offer support,
advice and information to people living with dementia and their carers. In the
Netherlands, where the first centres were created in the late 1990s following
research there are now over 140 centres supporting 2000 people every day. Soon
there will be 10 in the UK, and of these 4 will be in Powys which is an amazing
development for the county.
Members find that attending the centres means
that they can live in their own homes for longer and experience an increase in
self esteem and feelings of belonging with a reduction in feelings of
isolation, fear and anxiety. The Newtown centre is a partnership project
between DMiP and Dementia Friendly Newtown. An Initiative Group has been set up
to look at locations for the centre, volunteer recruitment and responding to
the needs of local people living with dementia. The planned open day for the
centre is Tuesday 1 October 2019 and if
anyone is interested in getting involved in the meantime they should contact
DMiP by emailing info@dmip.org.uk or call 01597
821166. Developments can also be followed on social media by connecting via Facebook or following
via Twitter
Hafren
School Intergenerational Project - Children from Hafren School
Children from Hafren Junior school came along
to share their intergenerational singing project with us. Three hundred staff
and pupils at the school are trained as dementia friends, with two members of
staff qualified dementia champions. Pupils from the school are actively
involved with Newtown’s dementia community and can be regularly found at
Newtown Library on Friday afternoons and Plas Cae Crwn on Tuesday afternoons.
Carl Hyde, headteacher of the school, extended an open invitation to attend one
of their sessions claiming that the “two most memorable afternoons of his 21
year teaching career,” were as a result of attending the intergenerational
afternoons. Take a look at our video of Hafren Junior School Pupils or pop down to one of the afternoons to experience the project first hand.
“In it
Together, Dementia Voices in Mid & North Wales” - Anna Story, Frances
Isaacs & Glenda Roberts
Anna Story of Bangor University was funded by
a Dementia Innovations Working Together Grant to work with Dementia Matters in
Powys and make a short film capturing the voices of people with dementia in Mid
& North Wales. Anna introduced the film premiere with two of the
participants - Frances and Glenda - both of whom live with dementia. They said
“we enjoyed making the film - Anna is so easy to talk to. We had great
fun.”
To capture footage for the film Anna visited
different dementia groups across the area where people meet to have fun, laugh
and support each other.
The film is aimed at three audiences - people
living with dementia, the general public (showing that people with dementia can
have fun), and care professionals where it can be used for training purposes.
DEEP stands for the Dementia Engagement and Empowerment
Project – it is the UK network of dementia voices. DEEP consists of
around 100 groups of people with dementia – groups that want to influence
services and policies.
My
Life, My Wishes - Heather Wenban, Dementia Lead, Powys
Heather Wenban lead an informative and
interesting session about advance care planning highlighting the fact that
decisions we make about the end of our lives are just as important as how we
choose to live our lives.
To find out more about this important
initiative please see our earlier Health & Wellbeing Blog from June this
year, “My Life My Wishes - Live Well Dying Matters,”
Community
Transport in Powys - Sarah Leyland Morgan, Powys County Council
Sarah Leyland-Morgan opened her presentation
with a useful definition of community transport stating that “community transport is there to underpin
the transport network where it doesn’t adequately meet people’s needs.”
Community transport is not a free service and is designed to support people,
helping them to participate in their normal day-to-day activities in areas such
as
●
Education and Training
●
Employment
●
Health appointments.
●
Shopping.
Community transport is designed to feed in to
the public transport network with three types of provision in Powys
Dial-A-Ride
Ten Dial-a-Ride schemes operate in Powys
provided by mini buses and MPV accessible vehicles (Multi Purpose Vehicle)
Dial-a-Ride provides a door to door service, usually within a 10 mile radius
where users are not able to use their concessionary passes, membership schemes
are usually available.
Community Car Schemes
Make use of of volunteers cars with the travel
costs being reimbursed. Not all community car schemes are membership based with
trips often being to the hospital or longer, out of county journeys.
Taxi Card Schemes
Currently there are two taxi card schemes
operating in Powys. People in Montgomeryshire are supported with tokens of
between £50-£100. The main issue with the schemes is a lack of taxi services in
the area. Membership schemes are usually available where the service operates
and often can be used within a ten mile radius.
Group Hire
Some third sector organisations offer group
vehicle hire services, some offer a driver, with others you have to provide
your own.
Powys Community Transport can support groups
and communities in many ways, in the year 2018-2019 community transport has
assisted people with the following trips:
●
5,778 Powys Community Hospital.
●
20,000 Education & Work
●
1,292 District General Hospitals
Wales
●
2,229 District General Hospitals
England
●
9,048 Primary Care
●
30,000 Social & Pleasure
●
10,000 Day centres
●
79,136 passenger journeys made in
total.
In this time period there were 5,256 recorded
users of community transport, with 78% of Powys in employment and only 228
volunteer drivers, the need to recruit
drivers as volunteers for community transport is important.
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