Healthy Living Club - Dementia Focused Community

Aim

We are raising funds to continue to be able to offer dementia tailored activities which give people the chance to live well with dementia.

A grassroots dementia focused charity proving that it is possible to live well with dementia. 

Our aims

We provide people living with dementia, and their carers, with the opportunity to create new friendships and to engage in meaningful relationships in the community. We aim to replace feelings of isolation with a sense of belonging to a community group where members share ownership and within which dementia has no stigma attached.

Through our group, we provide individuals with a time in the week where they can enjoy themselves, free from the stresses that are commonly associated with dementia.

What we do

We currently run a full day Wednesday club in Stockwell, South London, packed with specifically tailored activities for people living with dementia to enjoy. Over the past year, we've enjoyed chair based keep fit sessions, music and singing for the brain, drama, poetry and much, much more! 

We have also introduced a Monday morning club as well as starting a 6 day per week lunch club for the residents of Lingham Court, the extra care residential housing where our club is based.

Our video shows some of what we offer as well as some thoughts on the club from our members.

How your support will help the Healthy Living Club

Any support you can give will allow us to continue providing activities which are tailored to individuals living with dementia. Highly skilled sessional workers run our group activities and create a good level of engagement with the people who join our sessions. This allows individuals to get the most out of the activities that we offer and truly enjoy themselves in this safe space each week.

£5,000 will allow us to continue offering these activities for another 6 months.

Our impact and coverage to date

• Extensive press coverage including our singing sessions being featured on BBC evening news as an example of inclusive practice during Black History month.
  
  
• An independent dementia consultant who conducted a Dementia Care Mapping observation for us commended the positive engagement of our musical sessions in her final report.
  
  ‘…never before have I witnessed so many people living with dementia have such levels of mood engagement for such a sustained period of time while in a group session together’.
  
  
• Our work is showcased in the South London Health Innovation Network’s (HIN) manual on dementia peer support and our way of working is promoted as an example of best practice in the Social Care Institute for Excellence’s (SCIE) resource on co-produced communities.
  
  
• In the one year we applied for awards (2015), we were shortlisted for both a ‘Love Lambeth’ award and Lambeth Clinical Commissioning Group’s ‘Working Together Award’. In the same year, Dave Bell (a volunteer and trustee of the charity) won the Lifetime Achievement award at the 2015 Dementia Care Awards.
  
  
• The South London Health Innovation Network (HIN) measured the social impact of our Wednesday club using evaluation methods developed by the New Economics Foundation and found that we generated £506,094 of social value per year. This is the equivalent of £5.18 of social value returned for every £1 invested in our club.
  

This project successfully funded on 26th January 2018