Sorry we've not added any new posts for the last couple of months, we've been really busy with the dementia project travelling across Kent and back again speaking to as many people and groups as possible.
We've been to day centres, peer support groups, dementia cafes, carer support groups, had individual conversations with people living with dementia, carers and also front line workers and professionals - we've managed to cover all six localities - and now we're really looking forward to the Christmas break for a rest!
The past few months have been amazing, we've spoken to so many people who have had so many ideas of how their experiences of living with dementia could be improved. From small ideas like re-designing a leaflet to bigger ideas like having a dementia drop in service or shop - everyone we've spoken to has been positive and just want things to be easier and simpler for themselves and others yet to experience the dementia pathway.
We've presented our initial findings and main themes to the Kent and Medway Dementia Collaborative Board and have started to re-visit some of the people we spoke to in the original round of insight gathering. We will continue to re-visit people to explore their initial ideas further, some great ideas have come up but in the new year we want to work with people to make some of these ideas real.
Once we've worked alongside people to come up with a few strong ideas that they really want we will begin to test them and see if they work in practice. Hopefully by the end of the project we will have some projects, services or products that have been thought up and designed by people living with dementia and their carers.
