Exciting time on the Isle of Man:

1300-imgWhenever the Butterfly Scheme launches, the aim is that it’s delivered to anyone living with dementia or simply needing memory support, wherever they are within the healthcare environment. Some regions have adopted the scheme across all Trusts, whilst others have worked with the scheme to offer its care reliably across their many services within one community-based Trust.

This month, I was delighted to speak at the Isle of Man’s very first dementia conference, run by the Alzheimer’s Society. Noble’s Hospital on the island is to launch the scheme in May, but this conference was a chance to look at all the dementia care interventions and services available locally and consider how they could work in harmony to provide the best care possible. The best estimate of numbers of people currently living with dementia on the Isle of Man was 1300; local people had crocheted or knitted one forget-me-not flower for each of those people and these were displayed on a tree, which you can see in this photo; the effect was very striking, especially as all speakers concluded that that total was likely to be well below the actual figure.

menuFrom the start of the event, session after session showed just what could be achieved. There’s an energy on the island to not only deliver excellent dementia care, but to integrate all elements of that care in order to best support those living with dementia and their carers. Professor Alistair Burns drew on many of those examples as he spoke about specific issues affecting the Isle of Man and how those issues might be addressed.

I look forward to sharing several of the scheme’s successful integration approaches from across the UK with the Isle of Man team, in order to feed into this exciting opportunity to create a very special model of reliable dementia care delivery.