The 4RDA Blog

September - More Tasks In Hand And Spreading The Word

30/9/2025

September has been a bit quieter in terms of meetings but still lots of things being worked on!

• I submitted an article about the work of Four Rivers and Dementia Friendly Parishes Around the Yealm to Bigbury and Ringmore News which was for their October/November edition. However, the editor advised that due to a huge amount of local events for that issue, they were unable to include the article but would put it in the next one (December/January).

• The same article was submitted to the Diptford and North Huish Parish News and has been printed in their September issue.

• I attended a Four Rivers meeting (Which was rescheduled from 03/09/25 to 15/09/25) to update on the work of both Four Rivers and Dementia Friendly Parishes Around the Yealm. Resulting from that, a care home provider manager asked for some information/support re: improving their dementia services. I am currently waiting to hear back re: a suitable meeting date for this.

• I attended an Erme and Yealm Caring Alliance meeting (17/09/25) to update on the work of both the Four Rivers and Dementia Friendly Parishes Around the Yealm.

• I met with Liz Hitchins, Four Rivers Chair and Ian Sherriff BEM, Academic Partnership Lead for Dementia, University of Plymouth (10/09/25) to plan the content of the workshop on dementia friendly communities that we will be delivering at the Devon Association of Local Councils (DALC) AGM (01/10/25). I also created slides for my part of the presentation.


• After attending the Alzheimer’s Society essential content Dementia Friends update session back in August, I also discovered that there had been updates to the resources to be used with children and young people. To reflect these changes, I had to make a few amendments to the final edit of the “working towards becoming dementia friendly” information pack I drafted for schools. It is now ready to go to print.

• I continued mapping community resources and attractions that could be approached re: becoming dementia friendly across the Four Rivers catchment area. As the area is a large one, this will be an ongoing piece of research for a while.

A few other things in the pipeline are:

• I will be meeting with Liz Hitchins and Katie Chaplin, Teignbridge CVS (06/10/25) to discuss dementia being a focus of the next South Hams District Caring Alliance meeting (28/10/25).

• I will be meeting with Melanie Ford, Older Person’s Community Builder, (06/10/25) to discuss how to make spaces and groups dementia friendly.

• I am booked to attend a parish council meeting in Modbury (07/10/25) to talk about the work of the Four Rivers Dementia Alliance and the support available to become a dementia friendly parish council and village.

• I will be attending the next South Hams Dementia Forum meeting (15/10/25) where I will be speaking about my role within Four Rivers Dementia Alliance and how the parishes are starting to work on becoming dementia friendly, with support.

• I am booked to attend a parish meeting in Harford (05/10/25) to talk about the work of 4RDA and the support available to become dementia friendly.

• I will complete the draft of the dementia friendly guide for GP practices. After that, I will begin working on one for the care sector.