Birmingham workshop
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A group of 18 volunteers and staff from Birmingham Irish Association participated in a Cuimhne dementia awareness workshop, facilitated by Dr Mary Tilki with the help of Cuimhne Champion Anne Jervis.
Several volunteers were former or practising nurses and others were mainly retirees from a range of different occupations. The group were highly motivated to provide culturally sensitive activities and support to mainly Irish people, willingly sharing experiences and concerns.
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Participants, and facilitators, enjoyed the workshop and some commented:
“The course has opened my eyes to things I had never thought about.”
“gave me a better understanding especially with difference emotions such as anger fear insecurity and isolation.”
As a result of the workshop participants stated what they resolved to do:
“I will try to learn patience and understanding, tolerance and treat the individual with the dignity and respect they deserve.”
“I now have many ways to approach challenging behaviours as I now have greater understanding.”
“Obviously we have a lot of very caring carers/families who look after our service users. They deserve more recognition and support.”
Participants considered ways of enhancing the already popular services:
“Cuimhne standard application form to obtain information to fill in for new members with information to allow us to enter into their story.”
“Changing Toilet signs in our centre to make it easier for clients.”
“Could we have updates, perhaps yearly, to keep our knowledge up to date.”
Participants were presented with Cuimhne Certificates of Attendance
Irish in Britain’s Cuimhe Champions team is working on creating a special book that might be used to support people connect with each other across generations, record and celebrate people’s life stories, and potentially be used as a tool to support people communication with people with memory loss.
Mary and Anne spent some time discussing this idea with the group as well asking people about the kind of support that carers and volunteers in community centres may feel they need to better suppprt people with memory loss.
Our volunteer Anne reflects, “The proposed memory book was seen as a very good tool for both clients and carers.
“A lot more training is needed to support carers, which in turn will improve the wellbeing of dementia clients. In the NHS volunteers have to have mandatory training. Perhaps this should be considered for volunteers in other settings?”
Irish in Britain is pleased to be able to offer organisations bespoke training free of charge on understanding memory loss and ways of supporting people with dementia – for more information please email champions@irishinbritain.org