A public symposium was organised on 6 October 2022, at Manchester Metropolitan University (UK), to report on the IDoService project results regarding how to facilitate active participation in meaningful activities, despite potential challenges due to having mild dementia. It was an opportunity to discuss the results with local stakeholders as well as interested people, internationally.
To start, Sarah Fox from Dementia United gave insights into health and dementia care strategy and innovation in Greater Manchester, followed by Cath Barningham from Age UK Salford, sharing knowledge about supporting needs after a dementia diagnosis. This first part finished with Kristina Niedderer, Manchester Metropolitan University, speaking about the benefit and ways of designing for people living with dementia. The second part of the symposium focused on the IDoService project and its outcomes.
Isabelle Tournier, Marie Curie Research Fellow at Manchester Met 2020-2022, recalled that the project involved a large variety of stakeholders in focus groups, interviews and workshops to co-develop the service. Their purpose is to make it easier for people with mild dementia to connect with relevant groups and organisations to increase opportunities for active participation in meaningful activities. She introduced the service design and project outcomes, which comprise a set of three coaching sessions to be delivered by a “wellbeing mentor”, with and for people with early-stage dementia. Then, Emma Gerrard, Age UK Salford, who endorsed the role of wellbeing mentor during the service assessment (see Alzheimer Europe newsletter, September 2022), highlighted how the "I Can Do Pathway" can be used to support the identification of opportunities for activities or volunteering. Her user experience was reinforced by testimonies of one of the participants who participated in the trail sessions, as well as from the volunteer organisation staff who also took part in two of the sessions.
Finally, the last part of this symposium was dedicated to thinking about the next steps of how to make the I Can Do Pathway easily accessible to people, and about potential follow-up. The link for the recorded symposium, as well as the I Can Do Pathway workbook, will be online, shortly, on the project website: https://www.idoservice.org and will be shared via its Twitter account @idoservice4dem1. This project is building on the work done in the MinD project, in which Alzheimer Europe was involved.
