The Dementia Bus run by training2care visited Swindon’s civic offices this week. So I popped there to check it out and to have a chat and see what it’s about.
In the simplest of terms, visitors to the bus get a ticket to ride into the minds of those living with dementia. The bus is a simulator.
The training2care website explains the point of this worldwide method with scientific and medical provenance. It gives a person with a healthy brain an insight into what dementia might be like. It allows delegates to enter the world of the person. And then, further, to understand the simple changes they can make to their practice and environment to improve the lives of those living with dementia.
The bus – well buses (there are twelve of them – travel the country to places of work and business. To fund it , Home Instead sell tickets to the ‘delegates’ attending the sessions on the bus.
From what I saw of it, it appears to be an excellent and …vital … offering.
The origins of the process
One Professor PK Breville invented this process of insight 25 years ago, in the USA. It’s owned by a body called Second Wind Dreams. Training2Care are the UK partners and pioneers of it in this country.
Research by Ulster university has proven the virtual dementia tour to change practice within 95% of delegates. Further it improves knowledge in 97% of delegates and improves outcomes for 100% of clients.
Over 200,000 people in the UK take the benchmark dementia tour per year. It’s now been commissioned by:
- 18 NHS trusts
- 4 HSE trusts
- Care homes
- Nursing homes
- Police and prisons
- Ambulance services
- Universities and colleges
- Councils
- CCGs
- CQC
- Electricity and water companies
About dementia
The Alzheimer’s Research Society tell us that dementia is not a disease in itself. Rather dementia is a word used to describe a group of symptoms that occur when brain cells no longer work as they should. This failure happens within specific areas of the brain. And that can affect how one thinks, remembers and communicates.
The all-too-familiar Alzheimer’s disease is the most common cause of dementia. But there are other types. And it’s possible to have more than one type of dementia at a time. For instance, Alzheimer’s is sometimes seen with  vascular dementia or dementia with Lewy bodies. You might hear this called ‘mixed dementia’.
The Alzheimer’s research website features nine different types of dementia. But there may be as many over 139.
