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Making a difference by raising awareness of dementia

07 Oct 2014

Last week saw the official launch and celebration of the Dementia Friends initiative, one of the University's social responsibility flagship programmes

Dementia Friends celebration

Dementia Friends aims to raise awareness and understanding of dementia through encouraging people to attend a short training session or to become a Dementia Champion with a commitment to delivering dementia friends training.

Earlier this year the University set out to recruit 30 Dementia Champions by the end of the year. At the launch event we were able to celebrate that this target had already been exceeded. However, we don’t want to stop there and effort will continue to be made to recruit more Dementia Friends and Dementia Champions across the campus.

Professor Chris Cutts, Associate Dean for Social Responsibility in the Faculty of Medical and Human Sciences, introduced the event by summarising the aim of the Dementia Friends initiative, thanking all those who had already become Champions and encouraging more people to get involved.

Guests also heard from President and Vice-Chancellor, Professor Dame Nancy Rothwell, who spoke about how this initiative fits into the University’s broader social responsibility objectives and pulls together work and research that is carried out across all Faculties of the University.  Special Guest, Councillor Mary Watson, spoke of how the University’s involvement in dementia supports Manchester’s commitment to become an age-friendly city and how working together can have greater impact.

The audience also heard from Professor Alistair Burns from the University and UK Dementia Tsar, who highlighted that, whilst there has been a lot of progress in recent years in the better understanding of dementia, there is still a long way to go and we can all make a difference. Professor Chris Phillipson from Manchester Institute for Collaborative Research on Ageing (MICRA) talked about the wide range of dementia research that takes place at the University.

Chris Cutts summarised the event: “This was a fantastic event to mark the successful launch phase of this initiative and clearly showed how the University has a unique opportunity to support Dementia Friends with its role in education, its research activity, offering public spaces and being part of the City. I was delighted that Professor Rothwell was able to announce that we had more than exceed our target of Dementia Friends Champions.”

Following the celebration event, over 25 guests attended a Dementia Friends training session delivered by Professor Burns, with a number of those trained pledging to go on and become Dementia Champions.

Dementia Friends aims to help raise awareness of dementia through attending a short training session.

Further information

For more information about becoming a Dementia Friends Champion or a Dementia Friend or to sign up to a training session: