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It is with great pleasure that we have selected Alzheimer Scotland – Action on Dementia as our Worthy Cause 2015 and we have pledged a donation in support of their valuable work.
This is in place of sending either paper or electronic Christmas cards to our customers – saving the environment, maintaining customer goodwill as well as supporting and acknowledging a growing issue for our society.
Dementia is an illness that affects the brain, making it harder to remember things or think as clearly as before. It can affect every area of human thinking, feeling and behaviour, but each person with dementia is different - how the illness affects someone depends on which area of their brain is damaged. Many different illnesses can cause dementia, the most common being Alzheimer's disease. However, there are many kinds of dementia including vascular dementia, dementia with Lewy bodies and alcohol-related brain damage. All of them damage the brain so that it doesn’t function like it would normally.
Alzheimer Scotland depends on fundraised income to maintain and develop its vital work and services, which aims to improve the quality of life for the 88,000 people in Scotland living with dementia. Alzheimer Scotland provides personalised support designed around each individual, including one-to-one support and day services. Advice and information are available 24 hours a day through a dedicated Dementia Helpline and local Dementia Advisors. Part of Alzheimer Scotland’s work is to organise community activities, for example dementia cafés or ‘football memories’, that enable mutual support and understanding.
Horne has long been involved in the design and manufacture of showers for highly specialised and niche applications within healthcare, such as elderly and dementia care. The showers feature components that facilitate greater user independence, dignity and well-being: specialised lever controls, riser bars that can also function as a grab bar and using contrasting colours and tones for the visually impaired. The T108A2L shower panel, which features all of these additional components, was recently selected for a brand new specialist dementia care facility with 88 en-suite bedrooms at Lydia Eva Court in Great Yarmouth. Although this shower assembly has a great number of useful features for elderly users, we do not profess to have designed the ultimate dementia shower. In fact, we don’t think it exists...yet. However, we are currently working with occupational therapists and researchers into aged and dementia care to further our understanding of the problem and potential solutions. With their combined input and our engineering expertise and experience, we are confident that further specialisation of our current shower designs will yield a strong design that will make a real difference to the lives of those living with dementia and their loved ones.
