Shared Lives and dementia 2012

12.01.12

During 2012, Shared Lives South West will be continuing to develop its work on Shared Lives and dementia.

Our new short film – Pat and Roger’s story – NOW OUT!

Made for us by Biggerhouse Film, it features Pat and her husband Roger, who has dementia.  Roger has regular breaks through Shared Lives South West with Kay, a Shared Lives carer who lives in the beautiful area of Dartmoor.

The film shows how the service works for Pat, Roger and Kay and each of them explain what Shared Lives means to them.  The film will go onto the dementia and Shared Lives TV pages of our website, and will also be available to purchase from Shared Lives South West in February.  Details will be posted on the website.

In collaboration with Innovations in Dementia, we will continue work on the National Shared Lives and Dementia project.  Two exciting things are happening in the next couple of months.

 

Firstly, our next Good Practice Day in Manchester with Professor Alistair Burns, National Clinical Director for Dementia with the Department of Health.  This takes place on 2nd February 2012.  The day is focused on commissioning of Shared Lives for people with dementia.  Spaces are now very limited, so please get your booking in quick.  Go to our national dementia project pages to see how to book.

By the end of February our dementia training pack for Shared Lives schemes will be ready.  This pack, specially created for Shared Lives schemes, contains three DVD/CD resources and two training programmes for Shared Lives carers to be delivered by the local scheme staff.  Taking Shared Lives carers through these training programmes should give a sold foundation of knowledge about dementia and about person centered approaches to supporting people with dementia in a Shared Lives setting.  We would recommend this as the minimum level of required training for any Shared Lives carer wanting to support a person with dementia.

All Shared Lives schemes in England will be able to get one training pack FREE from Shared Lives South West, thanks to the generous project funding from the Esmee Fairbairn Foundation. Further copies will be available for purchase in March.

If you would like more information about the training pack or the dementia project, please email Jane Bell at Shared Lives South West.