We hear from Clare Mason who facilitates the Bradford Pathways group and the Experts by Experience group at Bradford University.
“We’re still running our Zoom meetings for the Pathways group but altered them as we were previously doing quizzes or just ‘catch-ups’. Feedback told us that some people found the quizzes made them feel ‘thick’ (a real Yorkshire term!) whilst others (mostly carers!) really enjoyed them and the catch-ups felt a bit unstructured and not always equal in spite of my best efforts at facilitation. So, I/we now choose a theme such as ‘hairstyles of the past’, weddings, birthdays and celebrations and this week, ‘tell me a secret’. For the weddings and hairstyles themes, people sent me photos and I put them into a PowerPoint. I shared this on Zoom and where the person was able, they shared their story or memory – no pressure as the memory is theirs and only theirs, if they were in a couple, I tried to encourage the person with dementia to share their memory first. We had one lady who had danced at the Moulin Rouge and on stage in Japan and so the photos were fabulous, we had 70’s quiffs and 80’s perms. Kit and Julie were married when she was 17 and Kit 19 so their photos were beautifully sweet. I’m in the process of receiving the ‘tell us a secret’ entries, to do this I sent out some possible questions – tell us something other group members don’t already know about you, tell us a famous person/celebrity you’ve met, your claim to fame, what you wanted to be when you grew up as a child, a hidden talent. We’ve already got some fabulous examples that have had me in stitches or gaining new found respect (even greater than it was) for our members.
At the Experts by Experience DEEP university group – I feel very lucky at the moment that my line manager has encouraged me to take time out each day to contact one or more person from my list of members. I’m starting with those not on the internet and have had some quite sad calls of isolation and loneliness but sheer delight in being contacted and having a natter. Dot told me she’d received her book (The boy, the mole, the fox and the horse) and is now struggling to read but she’s loving the illustrations. I’m also setting up a ‘virtual coffee club’ for the group with a morning and afternoon date so people can pick a time to suit.”
Read the Experts by Experience group newsletter by clicking on the link below:
