This project aims to involve people living with dementia in designing and shaping dementia services in Crawley.

This engagement will move towards meaningful roles in the community for people living with dementia in raising awareness, campaigning and fund raising, priority setting, and service design and monitoring.

This project will run for 2 years. It will engage with people living with dementia on a one to one and group basis. Specifically, it will continue to work with a group of people living with dementia ‘Crawley Forward Thinking (Club)’ which has informed the nature and direction of this bid.

Over the life of the project, more people living with dementia, their families and carers will be reached, particularly those newly diagnosed and those in BME communities. The project has close links with the County’s Memory Assessment Service, the Alzheimers Society, AgeUK, the Carers Support Service and the Crawley Clincial Commissioning Group’s Patient Reference group. This has a place on it for a representative from each of the Crawley GP surgeries, holds regular meetings and runs surveys.

The project will move beyond traditional consultation by offering people living with dementia, their families and carers, encouragement and support to become involved and, where they would like to, play an active part in defining and deliver what a dementia friendly Crawley means to them.

The project will facilitate any interviews or group discussion based on the positive learning from the Making Hampshire a Dementia-Friendly County toolkit. It will also ‘walk the patch’ with people living with dementia to experience getting out and about in their communities.

Where permsion is given, the project will also write up the stories of people living with dementia in a variety of media and these will be used to support the work of the project.

Anticipated outcomes

• People living with dementia, their families and carers will feel they still have a role and purpose in the community because they will be able to lead, influence and take part in the policy making process by, for example, campaigning for new resources, if they would like to.
• They can help change attitudes to dementia through involvement in community groups and by sharing their stories.
• They will also live the safer, happier, healthier lives they want to lead with the support of the services they need to do so as a result of the Dementia Voice project.