Londonwide LMCs hosted a dementia friends information session for our office staff on Wednesday 20 June, as part of our commitment to make London more dementia friendly city. We also offer dementia training for practice staff which is separate to the Alzheimer’s Society’s Dementia Friend sessions.
Everyone is welcome to be a dementia friend and if you want know more about this initiative, resources are available on the Dementia Friends website. Dementia Friend training is available across London and you may wish to make all your patients aware of it so they have the opportunity to improve their understanding of dementia.
On 21 May 2018 the Dementia Friendly London Summit was held at City Hall, launching the Dementia Friendly London initiative. Londonwide LMCs was represented at the Summit along with a number of the Capital’s most influential figures including Sadiq Khan and Jeremy Hughes, CEO of the Alzheimer’s Society.
The Mayor expressed his ambition to make London “the first dementia friendly city in the world”. In London, there are 72,000 people currently living with dementia. In the UK there are 850,000 people living with dementia and that number is expected to increase to one million by 2020.
Over 700 organisations across London have signed up to become Dementia Friends. This is an initiative by the Alzheimer’s Society consisting of volunteers who want to better their understanding of dementia and become more dementia friendly in their day-to-day lives. The more people understand about dementia, the better they are able to support those living with dementia in their communities. The Mayor said “This is a disease that needs everybody to play a part to become more dementia friendly”.
At our annual conference last month, Sir Muir Grey told the audience he is leading on a piece of work for NHS England looking at the challenges facing London over the next 10 years. He highlighted dementia as being one of the two biggest challenges. We will be speaking to Sir Muir about this and feeding into his work.
Last updated : 08 Nov 2018