Living well with dementia, Workshop at the North West Dementia Action Alliance Learning Event:Building dementia friendly communities

The North West Dementia Action Alliance hosted a learning event around the North West Dementia Action Alliances and building dementia friendly communities on March 26, 2015. As part of this day-long event, delegates were asked to explore ‘living well with dementia’, in the context of health and social care. Approximately 115 people attended this workshop, including approximately 30% people living with dementia and their carers, together with people working in dementia care from a range of organisations. The aims of the workshop were to find out participants’ thoughts on what is helpful and unhelpful in supporting people to live well with dementia in health and social care, and to share ideas about what could be done better. The results were to be shared with the Dementia Action Alliance and their partners and the NHS Strategic Clinical Networks for Greater Manchester, Lancashire and South Cumbria. Ketso, a hands-on toolkit for creative engagement, was used to engage the participants in dialogue and gather their ideas. A Ketso kit provides a set of table-top tools that are used to capture and display people's ideas. Participants write their ideas on colour-coded shapes, and place them on a felt workspace. As participants are guided through a structured sequence of questions, they see the group’s thoughts taking shape, encouraging cooperation, inclusive dialogue and creative thinking.Figure 1: Participants using Ketso to develop ideas in the workshop This report presents the ideas that were highlighted as most important by the participants themselves, collated by the Ketso team. The full set of data can be downloaded here: http://ketso.com/examples-case-studies/mental-health-wellbeing#NW-DAA