Doctor explaining diagnosis to his female patient. Concept of health care for elderly old people, disabled.

Rural Dementia Awareness

 

I have had a very exciting meeting around the Protocol / Best Practice for Rural Dementia Awareness, the project has energy and is progressing at a pace.

 

There is a small team that is working on the early drafts and we are using the work from the Prime Minister’s Rural Dementia Awareness Group and well as work that has been done to date in respect of Rural Communities to put together guidelines and ideas for other groups to use, so that hopefully they will be able to use this information to build their own Dementia Community that will work for them.

 

I’ve asked to make sure that we specifically include all the groups included in the Equality Act 2010, such as gender, religion or belief and sexuality, as people from minority groups may feel even more isolated than people from majority groups who are living with dementia.  Inclusion is an important theme of this work, that anyone affected by dementia is considered, whether they are someone living with a dementia, their carer or wider family.

 

Working on this project is incredibly exciting, within the groups that we have seen, this kind of community based initiative makes a real difference to the lives of the people that the community is in contact with.  I hear many heart warming stories of individual lives that have been changed for the better and when that happens, everyone involved feels better about it.

 

Caring for someone isn’t just about the medical side of care, it is also about listening to what they want and what they are trying to achieve, which may be something simple like playing a round of golf, going to a football match or going somewhere for afternoon tea.

 

A good outcome for someone with dementia leaves the family knowing that after that person has gone that they did the best that they could and for the person living with dementia, they can feel cared for by their family and they will retain positive memories about that, for a long time, even when they cannot remember other things!