Dementia group set up to raise awareness

A steering group has been set up, working towards Chorleywood becoming a dementia friendly village. The group, lead by Melanie Allen who is the Area Manager of Business Development for Sunrise Senior Living, plan to raise awareness throughout the area for people living with dementia. Melanie told My Chorleywood News what it took to start the group and what plans they hope to implement in the future. She said: “This is a government led initiative following the Prime Ministers Challenge to create dementia friendly towns/villages . The Alzheimer’s Society is aiming to have 1,000,000 Dementia Friends by 2015 to help make the country more dementia friendly and improve the lives of people living with dementia. “There are already 96 towns/villages which have joined the Dementia Action Alliance (DAA) which is what the steering group plan to do by submitting an action plan to the DAA website. This will show how they plan to engage Chorleywood as a Dementia Friendly Village. “As there are already dementia champions in the group, including Gayle Staines (The Alzheimer’s Society, Operations manager for Hertfordshire), Jacqui Sheppard (Home Instead, community representative) and myself, we are able to deliver Dementia Friends sessions to residents, businesses, and schools to raise awareness of this disease. “We had our second meeting on Monday August 18 which was kindly hosted by Sunrise Senior Living in Chorleywood. We now have nearly 20 people wanting to get involved, and those in attendance included Cllr Tony Edwards (Chair of the Parish Council), Henry Goldberg (Resident Association) and representatives from the Traders Association, Rickmansworth Fire Brigade and U3A. “Some of the ideas the group have are to create drop in cafes for carers and the person living with dementia. We also want to start a competition in local schools for students to design a poster promoting Chorleywood as a Dementia Friendly Village. “I am delighted by the support and interest towards this very worthy project. Our next meeting will hopefully be at the end of September when we hope to have an action plan in place and will have booked some Dementia Friends sessions in the community.”