Zibiah Loakthar, our Cuimhne Coordinator writes:
Recently our Cuimhne team has been facilitating a series of Thoughtful Thursdays.
Our topics have included “Living with Cancer and Dementia”, “When The Person You Loves Needs More Care than you Can Give” and “Reminiscence Activities to try at home”. If you missed the session or would love to see these again, recordings can be viewed HERE.
We are currently planning some more Thoughtful Thursdays in June around the topics of “Keeping Ourselves and the people we care for safe online” where issues around money, fraud and identity theft scams will be discussed.
Our Cuimhne team will also facilitate a panel discussion on Thursday 10 June around Inclusive Volunteering, sharing good practice ideas for involving people as volunteers in our community activities.
Anyone who has ever volunteered will know that volunteering can offer huge rewards for volunteers themselves, as well as for organisations. These may include social contact and the feeling of being part of a community. It can also mean the chance to meet new people and make new friends, the chance to feel able to contribute a skill or do something useful for somebody else and feel valued. For many it provides the chance to develop new skills or new interests, or the chance to do something outside of normal daily routines.
There can be many obstacles to volunteering and family carers and people living with dementia may find it difficult to access the volunteering opportunities that some organisations offer. Organisations are often willing to tailor opportunities to individuals’ needs but don’t always think what these needs might be.
This can create a cycle where individuals do not come forward because there are no suitable opportunities advertised and organisations do not change their roles advertised because they are not aware of any need to do so!
Come and join this discussion session to share good practice ideas around equality and inclusion and tips about how to remove potential barriers and create accessible volunteer opportunities for all.
Our Cuimhne Thoughtful Thursdays sessions are open to all and may be of special interest to charity staff and volunteers as well as to family members and friends caring for people and for people living with dementia.
We have been using a Zoom webinar format which means that people can join from their own homes without their identities being visible, as we know for some people feeling able to join in privacy from home is very important.
If you would like to join any of our sessions please email champions@irishinbritain.org for joining details.