When is World Alzheimer’s Day?
Every year, September is highlighted as World Alzheimer’s Month, and the 21st of September is World Alzheimer’s Day. Dementia is the UK’s biggest killer, yet according to the Alzheimer’s Society, it’s also “the UK’s forgotten crisis” and “isn’t the priority it needs to be”, which is why World Alzheimer’s Day and the wider awareness month were created.
What can you do to get involved?
Getting involved can be the most minor action right up to the grandest gesture! Raising awareness, chatting to someone, or volunteering can all be as valuable as fundraising, and sometimes more so as it ensures that people around you on a local level have the opportunity to learn more about dementia and the impact it has on people’s lives. Other ways you can make a difference include:
Support and spend time with those closest to you
If a loved one is living with dementia, spending time with them can sometimes be emotional as we notice the changes happening within them. This isn’t a reason to stop visiting, though, as their emotional connection with you is never lost, even if the physical one is.
Learn more about Alzheimer's and share this with others
Whether a loved one living is living with dementia or not, everyone should have an understanding of dementia and how it affects people. The Alzheimer’s Society’s Dementia Friends scheme is “the biggest ever initiative to change people’s perceptions of dementia.”
Organise or Participate in Awareness Events
Signing petitions, lobbying MPs to change policy, or attending local dementia events such as a Memory Walk can all help to raise awareness and make sure that the vital messages of dementia support cannot be ignored. Together we can make dementia a priority.
Support and volunteer
Whether you’d like to help run a ‘Singing for the Brain’ session, organise community events, support fundraising or be a vital telephone link, there are many exciting volunteering opportunities available in your area that will help spread awareness of dementia.
Share your Story with us this World Alzheimer's Month
At Helping Hands, we’ve been supporting our customers to live as well as possible with dementia since we were established in 1989. We always encourage our customers living with dementia to remain as independent as they can in their own homes, knowing that they’re in the place they want to remain living in. Because we are a dementia specialist home care provider, we ensure that all of our carers are knowledgeable in how best to support people living with dementia, including their emotional wellbeing. Encouraging people living with dementia to continue communicating is essential to prevent them becoming isolated and losing vital social links. One of the initiatives that the Alzheimer’s Society are championing during World Alzheimer’s Month is ‘Share Your Story’, where they’re encouraging people who are living with dementia to “help bring dementia out from behind closed doors”. They are planning to lobby politicians by ensuring they hear real people’s stories of dementia and what their day-to-day realities are like. It’s only by working together as a society that awareness of dementia can be raised high enough that it will be given the priority it needs to be. Alzheimer’s Society are determined that the stories of everyone living with dementia should be heard by society and lawmakers alike, and that awareness of dementia will be raised as a result.
Dementia care from Helping Hands
Receiving dementia support on either a visiting or live-in care basis from Helping Hands means constant reassurance for you and your loved ones. Just because you’re finding your daily routine more difficult than usual as a result of dementia doesn’t mean you should presume you’ll have to move into residential care. Dementia care at home from Helping Hands means you have intermittent or around-the-clock care that enables you to remain as independent as possible in the home you love. Our support ranges from an hour a day up to 24-hour care, meaning you’ll remain as independent as possible and as in control of your life and your routine as possible. And because all of our care is fully regulated by the Care Quality Commission and the Care Inspectorate Wales, you and your loved ones will always be confident that you’re in the very best hands. Talk to us during this Alzheimer’s month and discover how we could be supporting you or your family to live as well as possible with dementia.
