Council to make borough ‘dementia friendly’ in wide-ranging initiative

Dementia Friendly: Attendees at Singing for the Brain in May 2018, organised by the North London Alzheimer’s Society at London Aquatics Centre.

All new Hackney Council staff are to attend workshops to train them up as “dementia friends”.

The sessions are part of a wide-ranging council initiative in partnership with the Hackney Dementia Action Alliance (HDAA) and the Alzheimer’s Society.

Every new staff member at the Town Hall will now attend the workshops, which are designed to educate participants on how dementia affects someone and what they can do to help.

The Town Hall committed to making Hackney a dementia-friendly community in January, in a combination of building awareness around the disease, outreach to local business, and events for people living with dementia and their carers.

Cllr Yvonne Maxwell, (Lab, Hoxton West), Hackney Council’s dementia champion, said: “All new staff do dementia friends sessions. We also offer sessions for councillors. We’re trying to embed this so that at the end of the two years we can hope to have a number of dementia champions.

“Dementia friends is not just about health and social care, but about businesses, communities, transport and banks.

“If somebody with dementia walks into a bank and sees a black mat, they can think it’s a hole and so they won’t go in.

“So it is simple things like getting a different-coloured mat so somebody isn’t scared – it’s not always big-ticket items, it can be very simple things.”

Cllr Maxwell said the council has been working closely with dementia-friendly community co-ordinator Sandra Cater, empowering her work across the borough to build awareness of the disease and support residents affected by it.

Cater said: “If people are more aware of what dementia is, then they are more able to be dementia-friendly.

“Some of the stigmas need to be busted. Dementia is not a mental health issue, it’s a disease. It’s also not a natural part of aging.

“Once people have that understanding, they’re more able to understand what ‘dementia-friendly’ means.

“There’s something in all our lives, whether you’re a banker, a schoolteacher or a bus driver, that you can be doing to help people with dementia.

“We’re talking with the bus service about how they can take part. For example, somebody with dementia is more likely to keep losing their bus pass, so we try and provide lanyards for everybody.

“But it’s also about not taking people off the bus, and trying to get in touch with the next of kin so that the person doesn’t get lost.

“Hackney Council put its money where its mouth is and has funded us for two years, and in that time we can put the infrastructure in place to keep that going.”

Cater added that the campaign’s aim was to build awareness of dementia to the degree that knowledge and understanding of the disease would become as embedded as the world-famous 5 A Day campaign to get people eating more fruits and vegetables, and has a follow-up ambition to get Kingsland shopping centre to sign up to the initiative.

The council has stated that the top two local priorities in the drive is to increase the number of local dementia-friendly businesses and improve the public and community transport experience for people affected by dementia.

The local authority hosted a number of events as part of Dementia Action Week, including the Singing for the Brain event at the London Aquatics Centre on 24 May, organised by the North East London Alzheimer’s Society, which attracted almost 350 people.

A ‘High Street Blitz’ also took place on busy Mare Street, where 80 per cent of businesses have signed up in support of the campaign.

The Alzheimer’s Society Dementia Community Roadshow takes place from 10am to 4pm outside Hackney Town Hall, Mare Street, London E8 1EA. Anyone with a question about dementia can talk to Alzheimer’s Society staff, to get information and advice about support and local services.