Real stories

What it's like being part of the Dementia Voice National Group

How Pete contributes through Dementia Voice

Pete has been a regular participant in the Dementia Voice National Group. This group meets by Zoom call once a week for an hour. Each time, the group helps Alzheimer's Society teams and other organisations, to develop and improve particular projects or services. In 2021, the group helped to inform Alzheimer's Society's new corporate strategy, and a review of our Dementia Connect service.

Like many people who get involved with Dementia Voice, Pete has accepted invites to get involved with Alzheimer's Society and other organisations on one-off or time-limited activities. These have included

• sharing tips for living well with dementia in interviews for Dementia Together magazine.
• helping to make banking more inclusive by influencing Santander as a member of its steering group panel. Find out more from Peter and others in a short video.
• co-hosting a fundraising quiz.
• presenting a 3 Nations Dementia Working Group webinar to help people affected by dementia about using technology.
• keeping a video diary for a Channel 4 documentary to raise awareness of the challenges of living with dementia and self-isolating during the Covid-19 pandemic.

In his spare time, Pete writes a blog to share about the ups and downs of daily living with dementia. For example in this blog post Driving Assessment Time, Pete describes how he has been facing the decisions about deciding whether he is still safe to drive.

I participate in Dementia Voice activities because I believe that people with lived experience of dementia have a useful insight that can be very helpful to people developing dementia-related ideas and materials.

What I like best about the activities is that they are mentally stimulating, collegiate and I feel as if I am making a valued contribution towards making dementia-related projects more polished and relevant.

- Pete