Dementia Carers Voices review of 2019

Our Dementia Carer Voices (now Carer Voices) team review activities for the ALLIANCE Annual Report

2019 marked a turning point for the ALLIANCE Carer Voices project having received its 28,000^th pledge to make a difference and ending the year by widening its impact to include the voices and lived experiences of all carers.

Many of our highlights in 2019 continue to be a reflection of people coming together to celebrate caring and sharing what matters to them in aims of creating a kinder and more compassionate community of care.

Through our ‘You Can Make A Difference’ campaign, we have now:

• Reached an incredible 200,00 people comprising of health and social care professionals and students;
• Delivered 950 talks centred on ‘Intelligent kindness’ and the ‘What matters to you’ movement;
• Gathered 28,000 ‘What matters to you?’ pledges from health and social care professionals;
• Launched countless ‘What matters to you?’ pledge trees across hospitals, universities, colleges, care homes and HSC Partnerships Scotland-wide.

Key messages from the Chief Nursing Officer for Scotland, Professor Fiona McQueen have remained at the heart of each outreach session.

The impact of our campaign on health and social care practice is evident in our case studies which reveal how pledges have encompassed both practical improvements in the workplace and inspired personal reflections.

Partnership-working has remained a key strength. We built stronger relationships with Glasgow City Health and Social Partnership (this link will take you away from our website) having delivered over 40 improvement sessions on ‘Intelligent kindness’ and the ‘What matters to you’ movement to approximately 1,000 members of staff. We even had the opportunity to travel 4,119 miles to Florida, USA to share our work and this message more widely at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement National Forum on Quality Improvement in Health Care (this link will take you away from our website).

Above all, we celebrated the passion, commitment and hard work of caring. We hosted the second Concert for Caring at the Royal Concert Hall in Glasgow where we were able to bring together 1500 people to pay tribute to Scotland’s 759,000 carers. We also celebrated the 10-year Anniversary of the Charter of Rights for People with Dementia and their Carers in Scotland with key partners – the Presiding Officer, Alzheimer Scotland and UWS at the Scottish Parliament.

We have continued to represent the Carer Voice by attending: the Acute Frailty Network, the Cross-Party Groups on Carers, Dementia and Life Sciences, the Focus on Dementia Group, the Dementia in Care Homes Group, the Older People’s Development Group and the ‘What Matters to You?’ steering group. This year, we also joined Social Security Scotland’s Inclusive Communication Stakeholder Reference Group. Further abroad, we maintained representation in Europe through the European Economic and Social Committee. This has allowed us to influence the international policy agenda and ensure that people living with dementia continue to have a central role in a post-Brexit society.

We also strengthened our engagement by leading an ALLIANCE Members Networking Event, hosting a workshop at Carers Parliament (this link will take you away from our website) and supporting a number of ALLIANCE Live podcasts, webinars and opinion pieces.

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