Starts at Home Day – supporting residents to live well with dementia

Starts at Home Day 2024 celebrates the value of care and support services and the difference that having a safe and secure place to call home can make to people’s lives.

The Dementia Housing Working Group (DHWG) is the only national group that focuses on housing and dementia. The group recognises and reinforces the importance of the housing sector in providing solutions to challenges faced by those living with dementia and their loved ones. By making even simple changes through a person-centred approach, wellbeing and independence can be vastly improved, enabling a much-improved quality of life for people living with dementia.

I joined the DHWG in 2016 as a representative for The Guinness Partnership. At the time, I was leading on a project to make Guinness a more dementia friendly organisation (opens new window). I knew from the first meeting that this group was really focused on practical solutions, innovation and campaigning for change. During this time, I met Jeremy Porteus, Chief Executive of the Housing Learning Improvement Networks (HLIN). As a vocal and knowledgeable source of ideas and connections, he has a track record in driving much-needed sector change and enlisted my support as one of the HLIN’s dementia leads.

Over the years, the DHWG has supported the sector and supported housing residents by creating a job description for dementia champions at board level and a dementia information hub (opens new window), a go-to dementia resource for housing associations, care providers and dementia networks, and a new dementia design guide – all in response to the 2021 APPG report on dementia. We’re also working with Alzheimer’s Society and Housing 21 to refresh our Dementia-friendly Housing Guide.

Cross fertilising my learnings from the DHWG and HLIN to my work at Guinness has allowed me to provide more options to our customers and enact change quicker within the organisation. With unwavering support from our Executive Team and colleagues across the business, we’ve been able to deliver a more tailored service for our customers living with dementia, deliver a consistent design standard that reflects dementia-friendly principles and information, and ensure regular help and guidance is available for those who need it.

Supporting our customers to live well with dementia really does start at home!

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If you want to find out more about or join the Dementia Housing Working Group, please visit About - Dementia and Housing Working Group - Housing Networks - Housing LIN

And to access a range of examples of practice, tools and resources on dementia-friendliness, visit the dedicated webpages on Innovations in housing and dementia curated by the Housing LIN, co-sponsored by The Guinness Partnership.