Aviva Community Fund has provided £489 of match funding
Dementia Carers Count: Regional courses
London, England, United Kingdom
Aim
After the last year of offering digital support for carers, DCC are now launching face-to-face courses across the UK.
Our story
Dementia carers have faced new and difficult challenges because of the pandemic, including greater isolation, increased fear and anxiety, and less access to support services. Over the last year DCC has been supporting family carers digitally through our Virtual Carers Centre and Live Online Learning sessions, and now we want to get back to supporting them in-person.
Our services
Our services concentrate on family carers and their needs, carers can build confidence to navigate the highs and lows of caring. They learn how to make life manageable, develop new ways of caring and maintain their own health and well-being that is vital in being able to support those with dementia.
Pre-Covid our face-to-face course were run from a hotel in central Birmingham, which provided easy access for carers from across the country. Unfortunately many of these courses had to be cancelled during the national lockdowns.
Our future
Now DCC wants to develop and grow our face-to-face courses by delivering them locally to carers. We want to make accessing our support as easy and as stress-free as we can. By taking our courses out to the regions, carers won't have to travel so far, they won't have to leave the friend or family member they carer for any longer than necessary and for those on our three-day courses , participants will not have to stay overnight if they don't want to or simply cannot do so.
By delivering our courses locally we can adapt sessions to meet the needs of local communities, whether that's local colloquialisms to be addressed, the needs of BAME communities as well as the demographics of the area. Carers will have the opportunity to create lasting connections with other local carers, which has not previously been possible through our courses before. We know this peer support is invaluable to carers, and many of our past participants have stayed in touch with one and other, despite living many miles apart.
Our ambition
Ultimately our aim is to provide as much accessible support to carers as possible, but we can't expand our services across the country without vital support from people like you.
This project successfully funded on 7th December 2021