Learning from one another…
What makes for a dementia-friendly physical environment, in our churches and beyond? We’ve been helped in answering this question by Clive and Barbara Rogers. Clive used to be a Flight Lieutenant in the RAF; he was diagnosed with mixed dementia in 2017 – Alzheimer’s Disease, frontotemporal dementia and vascular dementia. Clive lives with dementia and he has reviewed a local church and a local school. There’s a 10-minute video of Clive looking round a Shropshire church and a Shropshire school, explaining what makes for a dementia-friendly physical environment, accompanied by a checklist for you to use to review your own church or school environment for dementia-friendliness.
Whilst going round the church, Clive reviewed the noticeboard. And we all smiled when he looked at the Dementia-Friendly Church Certificate, with a navy band across the top and white writing, and said emphatically, “I don’t like that!” It turns out our Dementia-Friendly Church certificate wasn’t very dementia-friendly in design!
So we went back to the drawing board on the design and Clive has helped us to devise a more dementia-friendly format for our certificate. You may have noticed that our Dementia-Friendly Church and School Certificates are now both in the unpdated format. You can see the old version and the new one side by side: the new Certificates have a simplified format, with dark blue writing printed on a cream background. Do explain to other people why the format has changed: we can all learn by sharing on this story.
In a different area, namely our 'Books of Prayers' through dementia, I’m glad to say that we’ve taken a step forwards in making the format more dementia-friendly there, too. Someone from our dementia-friendly churches network helpfully commented that, given that black writing on cream/pale yellow background is meant to be most helpful for people living with dementia, it might be helpful to have the Book of Prayers printed on a cream coloured paper. This helpful comment has led us to print our third batch of 500 copies of the booklet not on white paper but on cream paper. I’m so grateful for the teamwork, as we move forwards, learning as we go…
Emma Smith is our Strengthening Communities Engagement and Comms Co-ordinator. Earlier this year, she was at All Saints Church, Streetly – and that church has stuck in her mind for very positive reasons. You can see, in Emma’s photo, that the Streetly Dementia-Friendly Church Certificate was still in the old format when she visited! Emma takes up the story:
“I visited as part of the RicNic Duck Adoption Summer Initiative, with a large plastic duck, called Sunny, during an equally sunny July morning! The visit was to, initially, see the Place of Welcome group that meet there each Wednesday morning at 11am until12.30pm, explain all about why we had a duck with us and ask them to write a word or two on Sunny the Duck that encapsulated their coffee morning group!
“The words they chose were 'Dementia Friendly' and I can 100% see why.
“As soon as we walked into the room at the side of the church, I was immediately met with a huge notice board dedicated to sharing Dementia-friendly Church information, including proudly displaying the Dementia-Friendly Church Certificate. It was at perfect eye level and colourful so grabbed my attention as I entered the room. It wasn’t cluttered and over-stacked with information, instead contained just the right amount of information and different flyers to allow your eyes to find something of interest. It was great to see the background of this board was yellow too; as highlighted in a previous video blog, ‘Reviewing the physical environment’ with Barbara and Clive.
“On walking up the widow hatch to get coffee, I was delighted to see there were signs clearly showing where everything was away from the main church hall. There were not only signs showing which way to get to the toilets, there also signs telling you which way to get back to the church after using the facilities. The toilets were marked clearly from the main door to them and individually signed for male and female. There were other signs too highlighting sperate rooms like the choir vestry and the main exit; all helping immensely for those living with dementia; and those without.”
Thank you, Emma, for sharing what you’ve found at All Saints Streetly: it’s so helpful to see the photos and to learn from the good practice in that church. And how helpful to notice that when it’s dementia-friendly, it may well be friendly for us all!
And well done to All Saints, for the very practical ways in which your are making the physical environment of the church dementia-friendly, supporting the inclusive welcome you offer at you church, including with your regular Place of Welcome.
The dementia-friendly churches logo recognises churches as 'Becoming dementia friendly church'. Perhaps 'becoming' is the most important word of all: it’s an on-going process of listening and learning and changing. I feel that gives us a good new year’s resolution for 2026 – to go on listening to one another and learning together, seeing what’s going well and what we can improve. That’s true of the physical environment, including signage and noticeboards, and also of the the continuing welcome and connections, week in, week out.
You are welcome to be in touch for a conversation on becoming more dementia-friendly – whether in relation to the physical environment and signage and noticeboards or in other ways. Do get in touch with me, Sarah Thorpe, Dementia-Friendly Church Enabler, by email or by phone on 0798 224 8949.