Get involved with About Dementia

Find out about how you can help About Dementia work towards their vision for a more positive future for people living with dementia.

Are you living with dementia? Or is someone you know? Do you want to help create a more positive future for people living with dementia?

A society where people with dementia are valued and don’t just survive, but instead, they thrive. A community where people affected by the disease – both those with dementia, unpaid carers and wider family members – are supported every step of the way to continue to live their best life through their dementia journey. A world eradicated of dementia stigma, where every person is celebrated and measures are in place to enable everyone to do what they enjoy.

This is also the vision of About Dementia at Age Scotland. But they need your help – they need people who have lived experience of dementia to work with them so that they can ensure they are asking for the right things.

Get involved

Age Scotland and About Dementia work closely with the Scottish Government to create change and directly improve the lives of people living with dementia. Input from people affected by the disease is essential to this work.

They pride themselves on focusing their work around the opinions of people with lived experience, creating a bottom up structure to our policy work, and giving people in the community a powerful voice to influence the direction of the future.

In order to do this they have a group of ‘Dementia Activists’ who they chat to regularly and they value their input massively.

Without them, we wouldn’t have managed to achieve the success we did through the government’s recently released 10-year Dementia Strategy.

About Dementia

Their activists remarked on how important community-led support was to them – so they campaigned for that to be at the heart of the Dementia Strategy. Carers shared the struggles they face getting information around access to social support, and this too is a firm commitment in the new strategy.

They are now looking to widen our pool of Dementia Activists and are appealing to anyone with lived experience of the disease to get in touch. You will not be out marching, protesting or hounding politicians, you will simply be sharing with them the changes you would like to see take place and discussing any upcoming issues.

You set the pace

Some of their recent opinion-gathering meetings (which are all held online) have included a discussion around rare dementia, and a conversation around upcoming changes to our human rights.

The level of involvement is up to you – no one will be asked to take on any more than they feel they can manage.

Current Dementia Activists say it has given their life a ‘new purpose’ and others have made ‘friends for life’ through their involvement.

If this sounds like something you would be keen to take part in, please get in touch with them. Email them at aboutdementia@agescotland.org.uk. Or if you simply just fancy a coffee and a chat then they host events for that too. 

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