Council in ‘call to arms’ with dementia fight

The council is also holding sessions to encourage its own workforce to become more dementia friendly and improve how they interact with people living with the condition,

The authority is also encouraging other organisations to make themselves more dementia friendly.

The stance is part of a wider national campaign, which is aiming to register a million dementia friends across the country by 2015 in a bid to improve awareness and understanding of dementia, to help people living with the disease in their community to have more fulfilled lives.

Dementia friends is a programme created by the Alzheimer’s Society to give people an understanding of what it’s like to live with dementia.

Dementia is one of the biggest health issues facing the country, and there are an estimated 10,945 people in Nottinghamshire with the disease, while one in three people who live over the age of 65 will develop dementia.

Councillor Muriel Weisz, chair of the council’s adult social care and health committee, said: “Becoming a dementia friend is a really simple thing that everyone should do to help us start building a more dementia friendly society.”

People can register as a dementia friend by attending a 45 minute information session, or by watching and interacting with an online video at www.dementiafriends.org.uk.