St Benedict's Primary students become Dementia Friends

Year 5 students from St Benedict's Primary School, in Hindley, did their part to raise awareness and understanding of dementia by becoming Dementia Friends in a session led by experts from Belong Wigan.
The pupils worked in an interactive session with Belong Experience Coordinator, Marie Calderbank, and Belong Dementia Champion, Debbie Moore, to learn more about what it means to live with dementia and how to support people with dementia by sharing in their reminiscences and creating a calming environment. Local social enterprise scheme, wehearttech, then visited the students to share tips on how to use technology, such as tablets and digital cameras, to create new memories with people living with dementia and share music and images from the past to evoke happy memories.
Michelle Ainscough, a teacher at St Benedict's, said: "The Dementia Friends session was inspirational to us all. We'd never done anything like this before and didn't know a lot about dementia, despite it being something that touches a lot of our lives through family members.
"The children were so engaged with the session that afterwards they went off and did their own research into dementia at home and started bringing in new information to share. Because of this I set them a task to create their own dementia information leaflets and the results have been brilliant, the best writing that some of the children have done this year."
A ten-year-old pupil from St Benedict's wrote in her information leaflet: "The badges (that we were given) say Dementia Friend so that people can see that you respect people with dementia… Only a fool would not become a Dementia Friend!"
Marie Calderbank, who organised the activity as part of Dementia Awareness Week, said: "The response to the Dementia Friends activity by children at St Benedict's has totally overwhelmed me. We wanted to equip them with some of the skills that they'd need to feel comfortable visiting family members in an environment like Belong Wigan. Since our visit we know that a lot of the students have gone home and shared what they learnt with their parents. They're a credit to their school and community."
Teachers at St Benedict's are hoping that the Dementia Friends sessions will become an annual event for Year 5 students, strengthening the relationship between pupils and older people living in the local area.