Good Practice: Dementia and Befriending

Great session and really appreciate that we were offered a free follow-up session – great to get a few weeks to review content and come back with questions and comments.

Purpose of Course

Dementia and Befriending has been designed due to feedback and high demand from befriending organisations. This training course is suitable for staff and/or trustees who are: 

• Unsure how to best support service users with dementia 
• Unsure how to train volunteers so they feel confident about their role and abilities to make a positive impact through dementia befriending 
• Unsure how to risk assess a match or location for dementia befriending 
• Unsure whether dementia referrals are appropriate for their project 

This course is to help your confidence in handling dementia referrals and to assist in the design of your in-house dementia training. Participants can use our training resources and/or help create a dementia-friendly service following the good practice guidance. 

Resources

All participants will come together online for our interactive workshop. Here you will go through different activities and discussions to build your knowledge and understanding of a dementia-appropriate befriending service and efficient training. All participants will receive a copy of two resources post-workshop:

1. Training Toolkit: Resources, activities, and information for training staff and/or volunteers to better support those with dementia. All materials and training activities can be taken, altered, and/or used within your project as you see fit.
2. Good Practice Guide: Supporting People with Dementia: Guidance on running a befriending project that supports service users with dementia. This GPG is exclusive to this course.

Your training toolkit is fabulous – absolutely incredible, I have signposted it to everyone – it is amazing how much detail is included in all the elements! Thank you

Time Commitment

This course is a 3.5-hour event, allowing for discussion, interactive activities and key theory on how to best support dementia through befriending and how to best operate a dementia-friendly service. All participants will be given access to the resources after the workshop. Please be aware that our Good Practice Guide and Training Toolkit are very detailed, broken into several sections, and require time to read thoroughly and reflect on. All attendees are invited to a free follow-up session. This is a meeting of one hour (maximum) on Zoom within one month of the original event. This is to provide participants with an opportunity to complete the reading of both the toolkit and the good practice guide and to ask any questions or to seek support directly. 

There will be short breaks throughout for participant comfort.

Loved the part on the representation of dementia in the media – the whole toolkit addressed issues I am aware of but the course amplified my awareness – great food for thought and I feel I could train volunteers now.

Questions?

Want to learn more about the course and resources to ensure they are appropriate for your service? Get in contact with the course facilitator, Victoria@befriending.co.uk