Category Archives: dementia

We need to talk about dementia – Dementia Awareness Week launches today

May 16, 2016   Carers, dementia, Featured Article, Norfolk

The numbers tell the story: almost two in every 100 people between 65 and 69 have dementia. Among those just 20 years older – 85 to 89 – that figure is one in five.

In Norfolk alone, up to 17,000 are affected. Over the next decade, that number is expected to double. It is a condition it is hard to escape.

Throughout Dementia Awareness Week, the EDP and Norwich Evening News will be highlighting ground-breaking research into the condition, focusing on how people can reduce their risk of developing it, and how our region can support those living with it.

Willie Cruickshank, director of the Norfolk and Suffolk Dementia Alliance, said the issue was one which should be a personal responsibility for every one of us.

“There is a reticence to talk about dementia but we need to start having these discussions,” he said.

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First of a new kind of care village set to open

April 13, 2016   Alzheimer’s, Carers, dementia, disability, Featured Article, Norfolk
The new £19m Bowthorpe Care Village opens on the outskirts of Norwich next week. Photo: ITV News Anglia

A new care village – the first of its kind in East Anglia – is opening its doors to residents from Monday.

It’s like a fancy hotel complex with a hairdressers, bar, cafe, shop and restaurant set in landscaped gardens but it’s actually made up of 92 care flats and a dementia home.

Four council care homes built in the 1970s in Norwich are shutting and the residents transferring to Bowthorpe Care Village on the outskirts of of the city.

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Problems faced when caring for someone with Dementia

March 23, 2016   Carers, dementia, Featured Article
Guest blog by Rev Eric Lomax
I live in Lincolnshire, and my parents Valerie and Eric Lomax, are elderly, and live on the Wirral. My mother, Valerie has been steadily declining with Alzheimer’s, for the lat two years, and this has made life very difficult for my father. She would stand at the window and stare out at people, and then demand to go out, looking for her family. Often she would hit my father, while he was driving the car, even on the motorway, and demand that he stop the car. Alternatively, she would get out the passenger side at traffic lights, or bang on the window of other cars. This was dangerous, and I saw  a steady decline in his health as a result of this.
For him, there was constant anxiety over what care would cost, and the fear that he would lose the money he had invested in his home. There was a real lack of information out there, and when I eventually persuaded him to seek advice, institutions would randomly use terms like ‘you will have to pay for her,’ without qualifying that, or explaining what this meant. For this reason, he resolved to struggle on.
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