Welcome to the Four Rivers Dementia Alliance - an information hub

May 2026 - Lots Of Progress Made This Month

1/6/2026

• I continued facilitating the fortnightly carer’s group at Tumbly Hill Wellbeing Hub in Kingsbridge (05/09/26 and 19/05/26) with Suzi Garrod (CEO and Dementia and Palliative Care Lead). The group has been renamed “Supporter’s Group” at the request of those attending because, as they explained, “You support us to support them”.

• I submitted my report of the village signage audit I carried out in Modbury last month, to the parish council community engagement committee (18/05/26).

• I carried out two dementia friendly premises assessments in Ivybridge: One of the Chapel Place Community Centre (11/05/26) with Councillors Victor Abbott and Crystal Cao and one of the Co-op Funeralcare (26/05/26). I will type up reports for them both with recommendations.

• I attended the Dementia Support South Devon Forum meeting at Ashburton (05/05/26). I made everyone attending, aware of the work of Four Rivers (4RDA) and also that of Dementia Friendly Parishes Around the Yealm (DFPY) and subsequently forwarded on electronic copies of all of the sector “how to become dementia friendly” information packs that we have produced so far, to the chair so they could be shared with everyone.

• I started working on a mini dementia friendly guide for funeral directors.

A few other things in the pipeline are:

• I will continue visiting businesses in Ivybridge with Cllr Crystal Cao (This will be an ongoing piece of work for some time), delivering dementia awareness sessions and dementia friendly premises assessments-The next one of these is planned for 01/06/26 and will be on the Ivybridge Town Council office and I will also be carrying out a dementia friendly premises assessment on The Watermark building (08/06/26).

• The work supporting Tumbly Hill, Kingsbridge will continue.

• I am booked to give a presentation at a South Brent Parish Council meeting (15/06/26) to outline how they can become a dementia friendly parish-They are already off to a very positive start by being the first parish in the 4RDA catchment area to install dementia friendly village signage.

• I will be attending the Erme & Yealm Caring Alliance meeting in Ivybridge (24/06/26) where I will give an update on the work of both 4RDA and DFPY.

• I will continue with writing dementia friendly information guides for different sectors -The mini-guide for funeral directors currently and then I will return to the one for the care sector.