CARERS coping daily with looking after loved ones with dementia and advanced Parkinson’s Disease have a new support-group to lean on.

Hope for Home was launched in May 2009 at St Michael’s church hall, Pond Road, Blackheath. It’s made up of existing carers, those who have ‘been there’ and their friends.
Their website and their contact-number was launched the same day – for anyone to get in touch.

Guest speakers at the first Hope for Home meeting included Dr Adrian Treloar, consultant and senior lecturer in old age psychiatry, at Oxleas NHS Trust.

He told GT: “When it can be done, care at home can work really well – with good results.
“Giving people with dementia comfort and family company towards the end of their life can be a great opportunity. So, if this charity can give information and support, that will be fantastic.”

GT went to talk to Sarah Burnard from the new group.

Sarah, from Blackheath, first came up with the idea for ‘Hope for Home’ after caring for her mum, Betty, who died aged 92 after two years living with dementia.

Sarah, who has a background both as a health services manager and also as a physiotherapist in the  NHS, as well as in mental health and in finance, told us: “One of the challenges with dementia is that it affects people in completely different ways.
“Sometimes my mother wouldn’t know who I was – but at other times she was very lucid.
“She absolutely loved life.
“During the War, she commuted on the tram from Purley every day to run my father’s tobacconist’s while he was away in the Parachute Regiment. The shop was opposite the Royal Arsenal in Woolwich.
“She played tennis until she was aged 70. We used to take walks of two or three miles a day until she was 90, and it was hard to keep up with her.
“She lived – and died – in the same house she’d been in for over 50 years. She loved throwing parties and she had people to dinner every Saturday night.
“In fact, her whole life was about caring for others, so, because of that, when the time came for me to care for her, it was an absolute privilege.”

In the final years, Betty loved to listen to music and to have children around her. Sarah said: “My mum also loved Greenwich Park. We had a dog called Rosepeach– a mutt from Battersea! – and, even when mum was not so well, we used to try go to the park in the car twice a day, as we had always done.”

Everyone at Hope for Home knows that caring for someone with dementia can be very lonely. That’s where the new support-group comes in.

It wants to help people get the ‘big picture’ of what’s available out there and campaign for a continued improvement of the services that are currently available for home-care.
Sarah said: “I remember sitting at home, thinking there must be thousands of people like me ‘out there’ .

“I was so lucky, we have the most terrific bunch of GPs in this area, and I have many wonderful friends.

“But the thing about Hope for Home is that we’re there if people need us. Caring for someone at home with dementia won’t work for everyone – but, if people want to have a go, we’ll try to do what we can to help.”

The group is looking for funding with a long-term aim of setting up a dedicated telephone help-line, and it needs a range of volunteers to assist with everything from checking emails, fund-raising, keeping up the publicity, and setting up a database of information.

Find out more by ringing 020-8463 0128 and by visiting home@hopeforhome.org.uk

**About 560,000 people suffer from dementia in England and this is expected to rise to over 750,000 by 2020.