University of Worcester helping Worcestershire libraries become more dementia-friendly
Members of the university’s Association for Dementia Studies have been delivering sessions to library staff across the county aiming to give them more knowledge on dementia
The University of Worcester has been working with libraries across Worcestershire to deliver training to them which focuses on ways they can become more dementia-friendly.
Members of the university’s Association for Dementia Studies, which specialises in helping people live with dementia, delivered sessions with select library staff from different parts of the county.
In them, they looked at understanding the symptoms, the different ways that dementia can impact on people, potential barriers to inclusion, and the importance of communication and support.
Senior lecturer within the Association for Dementia Studies Dr Catrin Jones, who led the training, said the focus was on how these spaces could be more inclusive for people with dementia.
She said: "When we were developing the training, we found limited guidance for libraries, so we thought that would be a really interesting thing to develop.
"We covered what are the differences between the different main types of dementia and how that might be affecting somebody in terms of the symptoms they might experience.
So the most common symptom we hear about is memory, but there might be perception difficulties or language difficulties, so we helped them unpick how that might be applied to the setting of the library ."
From the training, ‘dementia ambassadors’ have been created to look for ways to enhance their libraries’ environments and activities and they have started visiting care homes to promote dementia resources in libraries, to launching story telling sessions for adults.
Several libraries have also requested materials created through the Association’s ‘Crossing the line’ research to support people providing personal care for people living with dementia to put on display.