With many hospitals and healthcare teams starting to return to some sort of normality, any of us would understand if staff were too exhausted to think much beyond trying to pick up where they left off. Many Butterfly Scheme Leads, though, are full of energy and keen to reinvigorate their teams’ dementia care by providing education refreshers and creating new sub-team support. This once again shows the passion they have for their specialist area and their dedication to leading all staff towards appropriate, reliable dementia care.

Having had to postpone a planned group collaborative event, scheduled for March, we’re even looking ahead at replacement dates – albeit by means of a virtual get-together, rather than a face-to-face one. The Butterfly Scheme is known for its collaborative approach and because all the member teams are offering the same core system of care, they’re a fantastic support network for one another. 

Step by step, key staff are picking up their specialist roles again, having been deployed in other ways during the peak of the pandemic. Many of them will have observed how the dementia care skills of the wider team have supported people with the delirium sometimes associated with Covid-19, and I’m sure this will be the topic of much discussion; dementia care skills have a strong overlap with delirium care and the scheme does at all times include care for people with delirium, regardless of whether they live with dementia. We shall certainly be taking any learning forward.

I feel huge pride to be working with such passionate Dementia Care Leads. By emerging from these past months in the way they are, they yet again demonstrate that they’re very special people indeed.