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Find out more about 'The Foreign Aide' here on my website.

Let's build the Care Combine together

Second, I've been moving on with plans to establish The Care Combine — a project that re-imagines dementia care and aims to transform adult social care. Today I'm asking for your help. Nothing too hard ... I'm just asking you to put on your thinking cap!

Photo by Richard Hedrick on Unsplash

The big idea behind The Care Combine is that, just as we take our children to school, we take those with early- or mid-stage dementia patients to a centre where, every day during working hours for seven days a week, they're offered opportunities to engage in meaningful and purposeful activities, supported by professional and volunteer helpers. Activities like gardening, growing flowers, fruit and vegetables for the community; or helping to make streets clean and tidy; or recording stories from their lives for their grandchildren; or working as a choir and putting on a concert.

One of the worst effects of dementia is the feeling that you're cut off from society, that you no longer have a part to play. And that doesn't just apply to dementia patients. Family-members providing vital care begin to feel that isolation too — especially if they have given up a career to care for a loved-one. Community-focused activities, like those I've described, will help everyone to feel that they're still useful and have a part to play.

So we're suggesting that family carers go along to the centres too. But not every day! Our Care Combine plan is that carers should volunteer for just two days a week ('buying' free membership for their loved-one); for the other five days their daytime hours will be free — to work, to study, to follow a hobby, to meet up with friends ... whatever they want.

What does this mean? These carers get a break from their 24 x 7 responsibilities. They have recovery time. Their own health doesn't suffer. On the days they go to the centre, they can discuss issues with others in the same situation, and get training and advice from professionals. They don't have to struggle on their own any more.

Most important of all, if the carers are in good shape, then the patients are likely to be able to remain living at home for longer, which is where most of them will want to be. For most of us, the thought of losing our freedom, of being bundled off into the care of strangers, is anathema (no matter how good the residential care may turn out to be).

That's just an outline of the plan I'm developing now, a plan which I'll be explaining further in the coming weeks. (You'll also find more detail on my 2019 Care Combine website, soon to be updated.)

Now, I said I wanted your help. I'm thinking about those meaningful and purposeful activities that will keep everyone busy at The Bine (that's what I'm calling our centres). I mentioned a few activities above. Here are a couple more: helping those in their community who may not be able to get out to do the shopping, or to walk their dog, or just dropping in for a chat.

I'd like 100 (or more) different ideas like this, which later, we'll assemble into a handbook for our Bine centres. Ideally, but not exclusively, they'll be community-focused and give everyone a sense of achievement. I want activities that can be completed by groups of members (that's what we'll call those who need supervision) and their helpers (typically in a ratio of 1 - 3 members to 1 helper). The more fun, the better.

If you have suggestions, please send them to me at [email protected]. And if you'd like to get involved with helping to write the Activities Handbook, when the time comes, let me know too. I'm not quite ready for this yet, but I will be building a team around me in the coming months. The Care Combine cannot be a 1-person show: I'm sowing a seed — but it will need many hands to bring it to fruition.

So that's it for this time — as I transition away from The Foreign Aide and towards The Marathon Years and The Care Combine. I look forward to your activity suggestions ... and don't forget to sign up below so that you can get your voucher code for the audiobook.

Alan