Covid-19, Dementia Project
The Race Equality Foundation has been given funding from the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) to lead the Dementia programme which is part of the Government’s £750m support package for charities to support people from Black, Asian and minority communities (BAME) affected by dementia who have struggled under the Covid-19 lockdown.
The programme aims to help BAME organisations work with individuals and families from BAME communities affected by dementia to be able to cope with the impact of the pandemic.
APDA has successfully secured the funding to help deliver our Dementia project to support our community.
We are using the funding to bring a project called ‘Yeh Mera Ghar' Hai (This is my home)’, using tablets with dementia friendly apps supported by our befrienders an advocates to help with the clients memory.
The aims of the project were to provide 10 individuals with mild cognitive impairment with a combination of advocacy and engaging; informative & fun activities on a Tablet for six weeks.
Mild cognitive impairment is a common condition in the elderly and is defined as the symptomatic pre dementia stage on the continuum of cognitive decline by objective impairment in cognition & is not severe enough to require help with usual activities of daily living.
The activities included on the tablet included daily aid; memory training, relaxation and games apps. Each participant of the Yeh Mera Ghar Hai Project were visited by advocates twice a week.
The findings illustrated the participant had enjoyed the visits as the advocates provided opportunities that enabled the participants to feel safe when discussing their personalised concerns with trained advocates as they felt understood and supported. Their loneliness was decreased and there was an increase in their emotional well being. The participants had learnt about the benefits of using assistive technology.
At the beginning of the project the participants had found the apps difficult as this was the first time, eight of the participants were using assistive technology. However; as the weeks went by families and advocates observed that their clients/relative had become more alert; smiled more and wanted the advocates to continue visiting.
