Demonstrating our support for Dementia Awareness Week 14-20th May

Dementia is set to be the 21st century’s biggest killer. But awareness and understanding remains low and many families are facing it alone.

To play our part the awareness week, we thought we would share how we help people living with dementia through our highly skilled advocacy service.

At Advocacy Focus, we have a vast experience of helping to give support and understanding and practical support to those living with dementia, and their families. We have 12 trained dementia friends and are in the process of training up a further 6 team members.

How Advocacy helped Mr Shaw from Lancashire

Our Independent Advocate Becci Jackson recently acted as a Paid Relevant Persons Representative (RPR) for an individual who was living in a care home with no friends or family.

Unfortunately, the individual was unhappy with being in the care home and would often pack his belongings and sit by the front door for long periods.

Becci visited the client every month and, as a result of working with the client over a period of time and building up a relationship, it was discovered that the client was not happy in the care home due to not being able to go out, and there being a lot of noise coming from the resident in the room next to him, meaning he could not sleep.

Taking the time to listen to the concerns of the individual meant that we could then help to address the specific concerns.

As is our duty as the person’s representative, we take our role very  seriously and we worked closely with the care home staff and the person’s Legal Power of Attorney and as a result, he has been able to visit shops in the local area, garden centres, go for walks along the lake and go to the pub.

We also raised his concerns around the noise at night to staff in the care home and he was offered an alternative room in a quieter area of the home which he accepted.

Our client is now very happy in the care home, is able to maintain access to the local community, and feels his new room is “top notch”. This is just one example of how we can help people, even those living with dementia to have a better quality of life and achieve the things that matter to them.

To find out about how Advocacy can help you or someone you know, phone 0300 323 0965 or email admin@advocacyfocus.org.uk

To find out more about the Dementia Awareness Week, click here: https://www.alzheimers.org.uk/downloads/20167/dementia_awareness_week

Alzheimer’s Society have created a useful booklet which outlines 5 things that you need to know about dementia, download it here.https://www.alzheimers.org.uk/download/downloads/id/1739/5_things_you_should_know_about_dementia.pdf