Chattertons Are Working to become Dementia Friendly

In May 2017, Chattertons Solicitors & Wealth Management achieved their “Working to become Dementia Friendly” accreditation from the Alzheimer’s Society.

Every year our staff have the opportunity to nominate and vote for the charity that Chattertons support and fundraise for. This year the chosen charity is the Alzheimer’s society.

In conjunction with the fundraising efforts, the firm are working towards making sure that they are Dementia Friendly. There are lots of mistakes that businesses can make when decorating their offices that could prevent a person with Dementia coming through the door. The one that we see the most is black mats just inside the doorway. To someone with Dementia who is suffering with perception problems, this can look like a hole which would possibly prevent that person from entering the building and being able to use the services of the company. Chattertons have a trained Dementia Friends Champion who is travelling around the offices to ensure that these mistakes are not being made.

In addition to this, our Champion, Kate Twigg, is delivering Dementia Friends Training to all of our staff. The aim is that at the end of July, every member of Staff that works for Chattertons, whether they are client facing or not, will have received the training and will be a Dementia Friend.

Dementia Friends is a national training programme run by the Alzheimer’s Society to help people learn a bit more about what it is like to live with Dementia. All participants of the training are then asked turn their understanding into action by committing to do one thing that will help raise awareness of living with Dementia going forward.

On 26^th June it was announced that Dementia Friends Champions nationally have created 2 Million Dementia Friends, which is a huge achievement for all of those involved. Dementia is a disease that is prevalent in our society so it is more important than ever for awareness to be raised.

Chattertons have played a small part in the 2 Million Friends raised, however, we feel that the part that we have played is vital to ensure that any existing or potential client feels that they can come and use our services and our staff are trained to have more of an understanding of Dementia.

In addition to delivering the Dementia Friends sessions for Chattertons, Kate is more than happy to deliver the sessions for any businesses or groups of individuals who are interested. If you would like some more information please email kate.twigg@chattertons.com