Dementia Awareness Week ran from 17-23 May 2015. Various things went on in and around Shifnal.
Dementia-friendly Shifnal shops and businesses:
Our Forget-me-not group and others from St Andrews church planned this initiative, working with the Alzheimers Society and Shifnal Business Forum.
Pack For Shops And Businesses
Weve got together a team of volunteers who are going round the retail outlets in Shifnal (shops, cafes, retaurants and pubs) 100 in total Shifnals bigger than Id realised! We delivered:
- A copy of the Alzheimers Society booklet, How to help people with dementia A guide for customer-facing staff, as a gift.
- A leaflet from the Shropshire Dementia Action Alliance the next step shops and businesses can take if they want to join with other organisations working locally to support people living with dementia and their carers
- An invitation to a Dementia-Friendly Shifnal Shops and Businesses session on Monday 8 June at 7.30 in St Andrews Church, Shifnal, within the national Dementia Friends initiative.
We circulated the same material electronically to Shifnal businesses, via the Shifnal Business Forum.
We will also asked in the retail outlets whether people were willing to display a poster or have leaflets out which publicise Forget-me-not, our monthly tea for people living with dementia and carers.
Dementia Friends session for shops and businesses
We ran a Dementia Friends session as part of the Shifnal Business Forum meeting at 7.30pm on Monday 8 June 2015, opening this up to anyone from the shops in Shifnal too. This was at St Andrews Church and was called, Dementia-Friendly Shifnal Shops and Businesses.
Forget-me-not tea for people living with dementia and their carers Thursday 21 May:
Our monthly Forget-me-not tea in St Andrews Church, Shifnal fell in Dementia Awareness Week on Thursday 21 May at 3pm.
Blists Hill dementia-friendly day Friday 22 May:
Blists Hill, the wonderful Ironbridge Museum which is a Victorian town, had a special dementia-friendly day on Friday 22 May, with admission for just 2.50 for people living with dementia and up to two companions.
Breakfast Church on Sunday 31 May 2015 Forgetting and re-membering: living well with dementia at St Andrews Church Shifnal:
Our breakfast church welcomes families and all ages: people arrive from 9am to share bacon rolls or croissants, and then at 9.30 we gather together to set our theme and then move into a church full of workshops; these flow in to a communion service at 10.30, finishing by 12 noon. (St Andrews run Breakfast Church once a quarter, when there is a fifth Sunday in the month.) On Sunday 31 May, our theme was, Forgetting and Re-membering: Living Well with Dementia, with a Dementia Friends Information Session woven in to the worship that morning.
Shifnal Library link-up: books on prescription for dementia & Strength for the journey:
Shifnal Library is held a dementia-friendly event on Thursday 4 June 3pm-4pm to launch the new Books on Prescription for Dementia collection. This is a wonderful collection of books on dementia, which will be a great resource for everyone locally. This free event included a reminiscence session and refreshments. Our Forget-me-not group was specifically invited to attend and, to mark Dementia Awareness Week, we made the following gifts:
- A copy of the book Strength for the Journey (from the Pictures to Share series of books for people with dementia click here to see this new publication) to add to the Shifnal Library collection, given by the Forget-me-not group for people living with dementia and their carers which we hold at St Andrews Church, Shifnal; and
- Five copies of the book Strength for the Journey to add to the collections held in Market Drayton, Oswestry, Shrewsbury, Ludlow and Bridgnorth Libraries, as a gift from Lichfield Diocese. (There is already a copy in Whitchurch Library, so this means that the largest libraries across Shropshire will all have a copy of this new book.)
Its good to see how we can pull together to raise awareness of dementia locally and to help people to support those living with dementia and their carers.