Helping Northampton Filmhouse become more dementia friendly through the Dementia Friendly Organisation Awards

Description of impact

In 2018 Alison Ward and Michelle Pyer set up the Dementia Friendly Organisation Award sponsored by Santander Bank, which provided the winning local organisation with an intern for 10 weeks to help them work towards becoming a more dementia friendly organisation. Northampton Filmhouse won the inaugural award, and intern Alison Stewart spent ten weeks working with them to improve dementia provision for their customers. Stewart's research and guidance helped the Filmhouse to train staff to better recognise the needs of people with dementia their carers, and increased staff ability to accommodate them through more volunteers and staff on hand. Other innovations, such as free tea and biscuits at dementia friendly screenings and a broader choice of films to appeal to younger people with dementia, have helped make the Filmhouse a more friendly place for people with dementia and their carers. Jo Gordon, Chief Executive Officer of Royal & Derngate, added: “This has been a fruitful experience and we thank Alison for her thorough work that has helped us become more dementia friendly. It’s fair to say we’ll see the positive effects of this well into in the long-term.'

Stakeholders/Beneficiaries

Filmhouse Northampton, Santander Bank, Dementia Patients and their Carers.

How have research outputs led to this impact?

Alison Ward and Kathleen Mortimer conducted a survey of businesses, primarily in Northamptonshire, regarding their current provisions for customers with dementia and their carers. Kathleen Mortimer has also explored the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) activity of the businesses in a main shopping centre of a UK market town to identify how these activities were communicated. This town wishes to be recognised as a dementia-friendly community and support of the town centre shops is essential for this to be achieved. It was therefore important to establish existing CSR activity with specific interest in disability and dementia. The methodology utilised was a case study approach, based on a content analysis of the organisations’ websites and an observation of signage within the stores. The findings indicated that just over half of the 52 organisations undertook CSR activity, which was communicated on their corporate website. However, there was a disconnect between this CSR activity and activities to assist the local community. Twelve stores had signposting to indicate available support for disabled people, but there were no direct communications on websites or in stores to customers with dementia or their carers. There was also evidence of inconsistency between the information provided through the two channels, suggesting a lack of integration.

Impact status	Completed
Impact date	21 May 2018
Category of impact	03: Good Health and Well-Being (UN SDG), Cultural impacts, Quality of life impacts, Health and Well-Being impacts
Impact level	Mature Impact