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Dementia Friendly Council

Published: 14/03/2019

Flintshire County Council’s Cabinet Members have agreed that the Council moves towards becoming a Dementia Friendly Organisation.

Alzheimer's Society's Dementia Friendly Communities and Organisations programme aims to encourage everyone to share responsibility for ensuring that people with dementia feel understood, valued and able to contribute to their community. This focuses on improving inclusion and quality of life through training and awareness raising within communities and organisations so they are better able to respond to the needs of those living with dementia and their carers. 

Flintshire County Council’s Cabinet Member for Social Services, Councillor Christine Jones, said:

“Dementia features as a priority in a number of corporate plans. In order to seal our commitment to this agenda, we would like to progress to becoming a Dementia Friendly Council, one of the first in North Wales.

“We are not beginning this work from a standing start. Raising awareness of dementia and how it impacts people in our communities has been taking place over a number of years. In partnership with North East Wales Carers Information Service, we employ a Dementia Services Lead to progress this agenda locally. I am proud to report that, to date, Flintshire has eight dementia friendly cafes, seven dementia friendly communities and three dementia friendly organisations.  We already have a number of departments throughout the Council who are “dementia friendly teams” and our Chief Officer team and some elected members have also received training.”

The Council Plan 2017-23 commits to further developing dementia support and awareness across the county by:

• increasing the number of dementia friendly communities in Flintshire; and
• working in partnership to support people living with dementia in the community.

The report proposes the establishment of a Dementia Friendly Council Steering Group which would, amongst other things, rollout dementia friends training across the council and create dementia champions within services.

The process to become a dementia friendly council follows the same process as that to become a dementia friendly community. The accreditation process includes achieving certain criteria, followed by an online application to the Alzheimer’s Society for official recognition. This will enable Flintshire County Council to use the ‘Working Towards Becoming Dementia Friendly’ logos and resources.