Quilters Commit To Dementia Friends

On July 18, we were at Quilters Junior School to listen to its RotaKids tell us what they had achieved in their year. It is always a highlight of our Rotary year to listen to these youngsters talk with such presence and maturity, and to hear how much they have achieved.

Dementia Friends

We like to give them the opportunity to present to the whole club, but the weather and end-of-term activities intervened so eight of us (President Michael, Secretary Brian, Roger Kettle, Patrick Rothon, Peter Greene, Peter and Christabel Strong, Keith Wood) went to Quilters Junior School to see their presentation.

Head Teacher Michael Wade introduced the children (from two of the year groups in the RotaKids) who made the presentation, and they were joined later by children from Year Group 5.  The Focus of the presentation was all the work the children were doing to help Billericay become a “Dementia Friendly” Town and supporting the older people in the community.   For example, all Junior School children and Infants school year 2 are all Dementia Friends.  (We didn’t realise that there were over 3.5 million Dementia Friends in England and Wales).

Its not just for the children, they also organised a Dementia Action week, and amongst the activities was a great reversal of roles, with the children helping train parents to become Dementia Friends!

Pen Pals

Quilters has led the way in creating “Pen Pal” links with nearly 50 elderly members of the community.  Pen Pals? Every child in the Junior School writes to an elderly Pen Pal, at least once every half term.  As we have reported before, the Pen Pals are invited into school for various afternoons which have included – Tea in the playground, a Games afternoon, a music afternoon – an opportunity to have direct face-to-face contact and chat with younger people.  Feed back has been excellent:

“I love to hear from the children with all their news”;

“I really enjoy hearing about all their schoolwork”;

“writing to the children and hearing back has been very important to me this year.”

Shed

The presentation was accompanied by an unexpected event – one of the charities the RotaKids had supported is the Men’s Shed in Lake Meadows Park.  This is a facility where men can come along for practical skills e.g., woodworking.  Members may know that Rotary Club of Billericay Mayflower have been working hard to complete the facility along with the Lions and other volunteers, and two members of the “Shed” came along to receive a donation, presented by the RotaKids.

Best Practice Award

President Michael Ginn thanked all the children for their achievements and for the quality of their presentation.  But we are not the only ones.  Maria Blanche (Essex County Council) had previously praised their efforts “Thank you for continuing to raise awareness of dementia with your friends, teachers, families and out in your local community”.  And that’s not all, they have also won an Essex County Council Healthy Schools “Best Practice Award” for all the work in raising awareness of how to help people living with dementia.