Living through Covid has changed the community especially in rural places such as Y Bala. When we started our Afternoon Tea at the start of the pandemic it soon dawned on us how many people in our community live with dementia. Previously we had a few members who attended church occasionally who had dementia  but we did not know what we could do, what we should do or how we could assist them.

Following a discussion with Rector Phil about our findings within the community we decided  that as a church and Mission Area ( Penedeyrn) we wanted to find out more about dementia.

We called on Ann Williams from the Diocese to help us. It was wonderful that more than 15 people had gathered to learn more about dementia. All present had their own thoughts about what dementia was – but we soon relized that our ideas were not in the most part correct. There are so many variations and not every person is the same.

A very purposeful session of a good hour with question and answer session at the end was the plan but in our case we were continually questioning throughout! It certainly was a good session to learn more, to understand more and get ideas as to how we can help people living with dementia and their carers , who are mostly family.

We know of 4 steps that we should follow:

• encourage all to become dementia friends – both lay and ordained( within the church)
• hold services and activities that are dementia friendly
• consider the physical environment of the church both outside and inside
• support the community to be more aware of dementia

Over 15 ‘ dementia friends’ were made on that day. Our Rector and other Christian leaders in the area already hold services at residential homes and in assisted living places. It is possible to tailor these to be more dementia friendly.

When we restart our weekly Friendship Lunch  we will ensure that we invite those people that we have come across in our community living with dementia.

We are eager to host an Afternoon Tea occasionally with the opportunity to play games, have a discussion, bring an artifact to stimulate discussion, sing songs/ hymns so that we can create a safe and friendly environment.

Things like this cannot happen overnight, but we know that there are people within our churches who are concerned for all and they will do their very best to ensure that things will happen.

This is the English version of an article on page 9 of the Summer edition 2022 of Teulu Asaph.