Council workers urged to become dementia friends

Communities Secretary Greg Clark is calling on all councils to train up their staff to become dementia friends.

Greg Clark and his team at the Department for Communities and Local Government became dementia friends after training with the Alzheimer’s Society and he now wants council workers to help the charity reach four million dementia friends by 2020.

Councils have been told to contact their local branch of the Alzheimer’s Society to arrange training to add to England's 1.3m dementia friends.

Greg Clark said: “Councils are at the forefront of offering help to the thousands of people living with dementia and the families who support them.

"Becoming a dementia friend takes only an hour but can help ensure anyone with the condition is treated with the respect and dignity they need and deserve.”

The charity’s Dementia Friend programme is designed to transform the way people think and act when it comes to the condition.

Tips for being a good dementia friend in the society’s Little Book of Friendship include:

• Simply having a cup of tea and a chat with someone with dementia.

• Creating a playlist of songs for them to bring back memories.

• As everyday things may seem different for those with dementia, some may not recognise themselves or feel frightened when they see mirrors, in which case covering mirrors with positive pictures such as old photographs of themselves may help.

• Reassuring someone who may seem confused, if colourful swirly patterns remind them of snakes, dots move like insects, a dark rug looks like a large hole or a shiny floor a big puddle.

• Giving older and simpler models of equipment such as kettles can also be easier and less confusing for them to use.

In the UK, 850,000 people are living with dementia, which costs the UK economy £26.3bn a year. This number is set to rise to more than one million people by the end of the current parliament.

Jeremy Hughes, chief executive of the Alzheimer's Society said: ”Dementia is the biggest health challenge facing society today and cannot be ignored.”

More than 110 local authorities are part of the Dementia Action Alliance which helps organisations support people to live with dementia.

This includes Wolverhampton council which became one of the first in the country to have all its senior councillors become dementia friends. It has since created more than 2,500 dementia friends.

Havering council achieved Dementia-Friendly Borough status last year and now has dementia friends in every care home and home care agency in the area.

Warwickshire council signed up 10,000 people to become dementia friends in 10 months.

Greg Clark's call to action, follows the UK’s creation of a $100 million Dementia Discovery Fund, which brings together investment from the government, the Alzheimer’s Society and pharmaceutical companies to finance research into innovative new dementia drugs and treatments.