Dementia is an awful disease to see any family member or friend go through.
After seeing her Auntie Sally suffer this cruel disease, in 2012, Carol Bates thought that maybe there was a possibility we could set something up whereby we could bring some activity and fun, with a football, into the lives of some of the dementia patients in local care homes.
After speaking to Julie Kalsi at Crawley Borough Council, in October last year, we set up a Dementia Friends training evening, which was attended by 12 people. The evening gave a very good understanding of what it would be like to be in the place of a dementia sufferer.
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Afterwards, we met with Roy Booth, Customer Care Relations Manager at Care UK, who had been extremely keen to get involved with what we were doing. Roy showed us around Francis Court, in Copthorne and introduced us to some of the residents. We were very impressed at the high standards in the Home and arranged our first visit for the 17th February 2019.
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We were also extremely lucky to get some funding from the Longley Trust, in Crawley, for this project, which we named COGS & Care Homes (C&CH).
After all this fell into place, we set up an Activity Plan to deliver some throwing, catching and kicking activity as well as throwing the foam balls into laundry baskets. We also had the theme to Grandstand and Match of the Day playing in the background.
We started off with a warm-up of heads, knees, shoulders and cones and continued to have fun with the residents.
We felt they found it as rewarding as we did and we look forward to more visits which will be arranged with Roy and we also look forward to building a partnership for future events.
If you are interested in the Dementia Friendly training, please contact Julie Kalsi at Crawley Borough Council.