Open Day.
Really difficult to judge yesterday as the negatives far exceeded the positives,not with regarding the day service so much .Here goes
The positives were;
Firstly,three professional carers want to book their mums in!!
Met some great people,in particular , people from the South of England Advocacy Project and Cornwall Arts for Health.
Julia Goldsworthy,MP and the press turned up.
TP Tony came and bravely admitted to everyone that he had dementia,thankyou Tony.You suprised everyone!!
The dementia lead for cornwall PCT came.
The main positive was listening to David Sheard speak about dementia care.David is the director of Dementia Care Matters,worked with the BBC and Gerry Robinson on the recent TV documentaries highlighting the terrible state of alot of dementia care homes.David also has written a lot of books with the AS and is a prolific speaker at many national and international dementia conferences.
I personally would make sure that every care manager,provider ,attended one of Davids lectures,talks as a condition of their registration.He is inspiring and would make everyone want to do things better.
The negatives were that no commissioners came.
Not one person involved with the dementia strategy for cornwall came.
Not one person from the medical profession came.
Not one manager from DACS came.
The PCT dementia lead invited 100 people to come,I asked hundreds.
On the day,we had two sessions where David spoke at each one,11 people came in the morning and 9 in the afternoon.
It was not the fact no one came to see our day support service,it was the fact that no one could be bothered even to come for an hour or so to listen to David.
He is talking at a sold out conference this week where delegates are paying £100 each!!!
I gave him to the professionals etc in Cornwall for free and they could not be bothered to come!!
David has just emailed to say he is reducing his fee to show his support.
Both David and the PCT dementia lead were flabbergasted at the poor turnout.
For me,well my team understand and realise that after listening to David we are very much on track with what we are trying to do,we are more determined than ever to give people with dementia in Cornwall the standard of care they so deserve.I am beginning to see how all of you on TP have such a hard time with the various authorities,if the leaders and managers can not be bothered how can they inspire others.
Tomorrow is another day!!!!