Wakefield DAA

Castleford Team Parish has (within 8 months of joining the DAA):

• Hosted 2 public Dementia Friends sessions with a third planned 
• Held a ‘drop-in’ at Castleford Parish Church as a ‘stepping stone’ to dementia friendly church services; 
• Held a successful first dementia-friendly service with a second planned for the autumn of 2015. 
• Their dementia lead has become the chair of our DAA.

Wakefield Libraries have, as part of their restructuring, refurbished their libraries. Sandal Library, designed with advice from the Alzheimer’s Society, incorporates current thinking on dementia-friendly design. Within the first few months of being open it has received numerous visits from people wanting to see what a dementia-friendly public building looks like. The design for Sandal Library has now become a ‘blue print’ for the refurbishment of Ossett Library which is currently underway and will be incorporated into the Airedale Library refurbishment in the winter of 2015. The Library Service also supports the DAA by providing a free meeting space.

Wakefield Council has launched a voluntary “Safer Places” scheme. It provides safe and supportive places (displaying the Safer Places logo) that are open to the public which act as ‘go to places’ should a vulnerable person experience difficulties whilst alone. A number of DAA members have signed-up to the scheme.

At a DAA meeting, whilst discussing how people with dementia can manage their affairs, it emerged that there were concerns about some vulnerable people being sold financial products that were not appropriate to their situations and needs. We referred this issue to our local Trading Standards team and to the Alzheimer’s Society’s Central Office.