Spring '19 Newsletter: Updates on Dementia-Friendly Initiatives in Southend, Castle Point, and Rochford District

1. Southend, Castle Point and Rochford District Dementia Action Alliance Spring ‘19 Newsletter Dementia friendly Essex MP's Your dementia team Dementia friendly dentists Dementia friendly GP surgeries Dementia friendly care homes Dementia friendly swimming Updates from members Good news stories across the uk Agenda Contents:

2. Dementia Friendly Essex MP’s A date has been set for all Essex MP’s to receive a Dementia Friends session within Westminster. Those attending will also receive an information pack linking them with their local DAA’s and Dementia services. Our local MP’s have a great online social media platform, we hope that we can utilise this online presence to alert the local community about the great work we are doing. We are hopeful that the local Councillors, County Councillors and Mayors will also take up the opportunity to get involved with the DAA and local projects.

3. Your Dementia Team posters Within GP Surgeries, Care Homes and Dental Practices we have a “Your Dementia Team” poster which includes a photo, general information and contact information of the Dementia Champion, the Community Dementia Nurse and the Dementia Navigator. We have created this poster to allow the community to visually see who the staff are, and to empower them with the right knowledge of who to call if they need support. We would love to offer this to everyone! Would you like a “Your Dementia Team” poster within your organisation? If so, then simply let me know an I can create this. By placing this poster on the wall, this will be classed as an action for the quarter – I can also put this onto your page for you!

4. Congratulations! Crowstone Dental Surgery, has been awarded accreditation and is our First Dementia friendly Dental Practice in Southend! Do you have links within a Dental Practice? Would you like to invite them to partake in the accreditation process? If so, please contact Cassie.

5. Congratulations! We have a total of 14 Dementia Friendly GP Surgeries across Southend, Castle Point and Rochford, with a further 6 working towards becoming Dementia Friendly Accredited: Central Surgery, Valkyrie Surgery, Pall Mall, Third Avenue Health Centre, Island Surgery, Grafton Surgery, Oaklands Surgery, Dr Chaudhury, The Surgery Canvey Island, The Hollies and P A Patel. Is your GP Surgery Dementia Friendly? If not, then you are more than welcome to speak to the staff about undertaking ISPACE and then Cassie can follow this up.

6. Congratulations! Silver Birch Wins Best Person Centred Dementia Care Award!! A CARE CENTRE operating through the borough has been awarded for their dementia patient centred care. The Silver Birch Centres across Essex have been announced as the winner of the Essex Care awards, for Best Person Centred Dementia Care 2018. They help patients and carers throughout South Essex, including in Benfleet, Basildon and Southend, where centres are based. Specialist centres help provide a day of activities for those living with Dementia, including offering cognitive stimulation, socialisation, fun, pamper sessions, hairdressing, music, baking, reminiscence activities, and open space in their centre garden. As well as this, they help support unpaid carers, by giving them a full day to take a break from their role and relax. The aim of this is to help exhausted full time carers to continue to cope with their caring role, enabling their loved one to stay living at home. Centres are run by Carers Choices, who help these carers have a short break from their caring responsibilities. https://www.echo-news.co.uk/news/17449760.silver-birch-wins-best-person-centred-dementia-care-award/

7. Dementia Friendly Care Homes A Dementia Friendly Care Home Toolkit has been rolled out within Southend, Castle Point and Rochford via the Dementia Navigators. The toolkit includes: • A fully personalised resource pack for the care home to give to relatives of the home; which includes staff information, compliments and complaints procedures , your dementia team information, activity suggestions and general information on the home. This has been made for families to reflect on during the stressful time of placing a relative into a care home setting. • A Mental Capacity Assessment flow chart created by Public Health England – easy and quick to follow to ensure all decisions that need to be made on someone else’s behalf, are completed for their best interest. • The toolkit is linked with the Key Lines Of Enquiries, to support the care homes with CQC inspections; with the hope that they can aim to raise their rating. The toolkit takes an in depth look at: Staff, Environment, Resources, Resident and Your dementia team. Each section needs to be completed, to enable accreditation. The end result of the toolkit is to link Dementia Professionals together, to offer support to the home and relatives/carers, to link the community within the care home and to holistically improve the lives of those residing in the home living with Dementia. • Dental flash cards created by Public Health England, to support the carer/family taking the person to the Dentist and to encourage those living with Dementia to carry on accessing their local community dentist for longer. • Your Dementia Poster – this has information and contact details for the Dementia Navigators, the Dementia Champion and the Community Dementia Nurse, we hope that by providing this information publicly within the home, that carers/family feel empowered to ask for support when they need or want it. • This toolkit will also be rolled out to all DAA’s within Essex and within County Wide conferences.

8. Dementia Friendly Activities coming to Canvey Island(With plans to expand to Benfleet and Rochford )

9. Member Updates Wesley Memory Worship celebrated our 2nd Birthday On Monday 21st January Wesley Memory Worship celebrated our 2nd Birthday “Lord of all hopefulness” seemed a perfect theme for the day, as sixty people gathered to share worship together with dancing, storytelling and yummy Birthday cake. It was our vision when we set up this new ministry two years ago to find a way that people with or without dementia could join in worship and take comfort that God accepts us all and meets us where we are today. Two years on and churches all around the country continue to contact us seeking support to set up a Memory Worship service for their own communities. In Essex there is a Memory Worship service at Thorpe Bay Methodist Church on 1st Monday of the Month and on 3rd Monday of the month Memory Worship services are held at Wesley Methodist Church in Leigh-on-sea and Holy Trinity Church in South Woodham Ferrers. Memory worship provides a channel for recalling the past, creating feelings of comfort, familiarity and spiritual fulfilment. The afternoon takes a regular pattern of welcome; singing well known hymns, reading familiar passages from the Bible and saying the Lord’s Prayer together. The formal part of the service lasts 30 minutes before leading into a craft activity which gives opportunities for carers to share and our “dementia friend” support team can signpost to other areas of support available locally. For further information: Julie Peek, Memory Worship facilitator, Highlands Methodist Church Julie.peek@hotmail.co.uk

10. Member updates • Southend Museum: We of course have had a great time working with the Peppa robot and attended a session with the Dementia Team using the museum’s 1970s handling collections, work on our Dementia Wellbeing garden has also started and we hope that this will be a place of relaxation and calm next to Southend Central Museum. • SECHA: • Palmers Law: Wear it blue for Essex Dementia Day and have plans to take part in DAW. • Alzheimer’s Society: We’ve had a couple of very worthwhile information stands for a day in Tesco’s Southend and in Asda’s Shoebury. Lots of opportunity to give basic information about dementia to people that came over to donate money and fewer numbers of people worried about someone’s memory or affected by dementia whom we were able to signpost to local services. Interesting networking at the local Business Buzz event speaking to business professionals about Dementia Friends and DAA. One of our Dementia Friends Champions ran a session for 23 Fire and Rescue cadets as part of their training evening.

11. Dementia in the news… AN INNOVATIVE pilot is helping vulnerable people win the battle against dental neglect and toothache in Southend. The new pilot project which has stated in Southend by Public Health England focusing helping those with dementia have a safe trip to the dentist. A toolkit has been developed which is transforming interactions with dementia sufferers to enable them to receive essential oral care. The easy-read materials with pictures aid carers and dentists with preparing and treating people with brain disease. For dental teams, an A4 poster with “top tips” was devised to act as a guide to support a patient with dementia and make the whole experience less stressful. PHE worked with Southend’s clinical commissioning group and council to establish what stopped people with brain disease going to a dentist. They discovered that carers found it difficult to provide mouth care to someone unable to understand or co-operate and also had trouble explaining the process of a dental visit. Gaining “consent” for dental treatment from a patient was equally problematic. It was concluded that dementia-friendly services at dental practices were all too often lacking. Finally, a best interest flow chart was developed for the dentist in charge of the treatment to help with making decisions. Cassie Searle, a carer from Southend, went through the struggles of getting her father to visit a dentist when suffering from dementia. She said: “During dad’s journey living with dementia, he has struggled to go to the dentist and keep up with his oral health. One incident involved a member of staff greeting him in an apron – this frightened him and took a long time to get over, and for him to go back. “We used the resource for carers and had a much more positive experience, as we had practiced with the PHE flash cards beforehand, prepared necessary paperwork, medication list and ailments for the dentists and even visited the practice beforehand – this resulted in a calm, and actually quite fun visit to the dentist, where his teeth and gums were checked.” Samantha Glover, Dental Programme Manager at PHE, East of England said: “The process to develop the resources was straightforward; the prompts aid discussion and helps familiarise the patient with what to expect, whereas the guidelines provide a useful cue for dental practices.” Crowstone Dental Practice in Southend who have been using the materials, have also had a positive response. A spokesman for the practice said: “The feedback has been excellent - motivating and enthusing staff to develop their skill set further, enabling them using the resources and tools available to support, understand and minimise patients’ anxieties who have Dementia.” The carer resource has been distributed to more than 100 care homes in Southend. Evening Echo for Southend and Castle Point and also covered on Heart Radio (Essex)

12. Agenda • Welcome and Introductions (5mins) • First speaker: Paul Pemberton (Essex Fire Service) (20 mins) • Second Speaker: Lorraine Rahmy (Dementia Network Co-ordinator) (10mins) • Third Speaker: Rob Cadman (Golden Oldies) (10 mins) • Fourth Speaker: Alison Askwith (Belfair’s Woods) (10mins) • Dementia Action Week planning (45 mins) • Networking and cake (20mins) (total 2hrs)