Five Bullet Friday (26 October 2018)

The Life Changes Trust are looking for individuals with dementia or live-in carers in Stirling to participate in small focus groups about assistive technology. They will ask your opinions and feelings about the technology to help support you live with dementia.

• You do not have to be using assistive technology to participate, we still want to hear your opinion.
• As a thank you a £15 Marks and Spencer voucher will be given to each participant.
• Lunch, tea, coffee and biscuits will be provided.
• Your travel costs will be covered.
• The group will meet somewhere centrally in Stirling.
• The group will be organised so individuals with dementia and live-in carers will be working separately but at the same time. So no need to organise two dates or replacement care for people who might need it.

We are still working on the dates but two possibilities are the 5th or the 12th November.

Please see the attached flyer for more information and please promote throughout your networks.

I had a very productive meeting with Amanda McCarren – National Carer Engagement Lead for Scotland at TIDE this week. TIDE work for carers of people living with dementia. Please see the website link for more information. Amanda and I identified how OCN and TIDE have matching values, aims and outcomes for people living with dementia. We identified how we can support one another’s efforts through collaboration and working in partnership. TIDE will be able to provide free training to any OCN carer groups who want to develop capacity, skills and knowledge for activism and influencing change. We also had an interesting conversation about stigma and barriers to people getting involved. We are going to support one another’s promotion and communications for the work we do. I will be connecting with Christina Berry Moorcroft, Communications and Fundraising Manager and Lorraine Bairstow, Regional Carer Engagement Lead.

http://www.tide.uk.net/

I met with Liz Moffat – Reader Services Librarian for Stirling Library’s and Morag Smith who runs Reading Friends. OCN and Stirling Library’s will be jointly working in a number of ways looking to create new opportunities for people living with dementia and unpaid carers to connect with OCN, using library’s as ‘place’ at neighbourhood level. Some of the ideas we discussed were:

• People who attend library ‘Knit and Stitch’ sessions could produce creations and words about what they value about the sessions and how they help them feel connected to their neighbourhood. The creations could be exhibited at the OCN Neighbourhood Festival on 5 and 6 July 2019
• Morag has offered to run some reminiscence sessions as part of the OCN Neighbourhood Festival
• OCN digital workshops will be held in library’s which will look at tech to help people maintain their independence and live well.
• Reading Friends volunteers can refer new people to OCN.

There is a lot OCN and Stirling Libraries can collaborate on and we are looking forward to developing this work over the coming months.

Reading Friends https://bit.ly/2AiESLQ.

Last week I mentioned the Buttercup Café in Bannockburn. Open every Monday from 1.45pm until 3.30pm at Allan Church Hall, Main Street Bannockburn. I met with Margaret again this week and amongst many things we are really looking forward to organising an OCN digital focus group with some of the café participants. Margaret is happy for me to share her contact details if you would like to get in touch.

Margaret Baxter
Email: maggie47@mail.com
Phone: 01786 813281

OCN Volunteer Community Researchers have completed approximately 17 of our ‘getting to know you’ surveys with people living with dementia and unpaid carers. This equates to approximately 25 individuals (as some were completed as couples and some are singles). Partners have been a great help introducing new people to OCN and we are learning lots of valuable information about people’s opinions and feelings about their local neighbourhoods. The surveys are designed to give OCN baseline information for evaluation purposes, but they are also an important tool for our fantastic volunteer community researchers to get to know people and their opinions. It also gives volunteers the opportunity to tell people about the rest of the work and provide the option for people to get involved further to shape the project. People don’t have to fill in a survey to be involved. Our volunteers can have a relaxed chat with anyone interested. If you know anyone who is living with dementia or an unpaid carer and might be interested in filling in a survey, having a relaxed chat or you think would like to know more about OCN work then please get in touch.