Age UK Salford offering free courses for dementia carers

Age UK Salford are hosting courses for dementia carers in Eccles, starting from this week.

The Coping for Carers event takes place on the 8th of May at 1pm, offering support for those who care for family members with dementia.

The two-hour course is open to family members, helping them learn to manage the stress and anxiety that comes with caring for someone with the condition. It will be run by a clinical psychologist from Greater Manchester Health NHS Trust.

Mary-Anne Byrne, Acting manager of Age UK Salford’s Dementia Support Service, said: “We’ve been providing support for carers of people with dementia for at least the last seven or eight years. We used to run carers training programs which ran for six weeks, but we realised that carers were struggling to get people to care for the people they usually care for, so we decided to break it down into separate individual workshops.”

Family members often go unrecognised as carers, with many seeing themselves as a partner or child as opposed to carer of the person with dementia.

Mary-Anne said: “We’re doing some work with the GPs to encourage the GPs to refer to us.

“You can access our service even if you’re just concerned about your memory. You don’t have to have a diagnosis, we give loads of information and advice.”

A similar session, Create and Connect, will be held on the 22nd of May.

“That one’s around carers doing activities in the home with the person that they care for, whatever that may be, just to make sure that the time they spend together is quality time and isn’t always stressful.”

We have two workshops coming up in #May for #carers of people living with #Dementia. Find out more: https://t.co/Za8vlSPwNJ @GMMH_NHS, Six Degrees Social Enterprise, @AgeukDSS #Salford

— Age UK Salford (@AgeUKSalford) 30 April 2019

Age UK Salford provides support from pre-diagnosis to end of life care and after.

“We have a friendship group which meets once a month. The friendship group was originally going to be a bereavement group for ex-carers, but then we realised that there are lots of carers who are ex-carers because the person they cared for has gone into a care home, or just carers who were lonely.

“We also run three buddy clubs, which is specifically for the person with dementia. Although it’s for the person with dementia – it gives them a day of independence – it’s also a day of respite for the carer.”

The Eccles centre runs a range of regular events, with a focus on carers in the run-up to Dementia Action Week which takes place from the 20th until the 26th of May.