Wycombe High School teams up with Ashridge Home Care to raise awareness of dementia.

Over 50 pupils have officially become ‘Dementia Friends’, after successfully completing an awareness session through the Alzheimer’s Society resources.

The free training has been given by Dementia Friends Ambassador Trudi Scrivener to help the students understand the effects of living with dementia and enable the pupils to build a stronger relationship with the local community.

A lot of work has taken place in Buckinghamshire to create a community in which people living with dementia and their carers feel understood and supported, with access to the services they need. This includes building an army of Dementia Friends – people who have undergone a short awareness session, to give them a basic understanding of dementia and some of the issues it can create for people living with it.

According to the Alzheimer’s Society , there are currently 900,000 living with dementia in the UK, and more than 7,200 people are estimated to be living with the condition in Buckinghamshire. Although there is currently no cure for dementia, people with the condition can live well for years. Every time we talk about dementia we get a step closer to creating a more supportive society. The kind of society we can all be proud to be part of.

Too many people affected by dementia feel that society fails to understand the condition they live with. Becoming a Dementia Friend simply means finding out more about how dementia affects a person – and then, armed with this understanding, doing small everyday things that help. For example, being patient in a shop queue, or spending time with someone you know who’s living with dementia.