About Young@Heart Cafe
The Young @ Heart Story begins in 2016.
Maria Collins, former Director of a local home care provider, noticed a pattern in the service reviews she was carrying out.
Her memory-challenged clients were becoming increasingly isolated. Local families were reluctant to take them out as they were becoming socially disinhibited as a result of the conditions they were developing.
The path to care services
In addition, families and carers were discovering how the path to care services was paved with good intentions, littered with bureaucracy and jargon-laden with terms like ‘eligibility criteria’ that were tough to understand.
““Carers told me the best thing to do was keep their loved ones occupied. They were bored, because they had stopped doing routine things like a daily job or homemaking.””
She thought: “If this is an issue with our clients there must be a wider need in the community”
Maria’s Eureka Moment
Then the Holy Family Church in Luton asked Maria to organise an information session about dementia. A surge of interest in this topic led to a single session quickly became 3!
The third session attracted about 150 people from local parishes, which meant a last-minute switch from the meeting venue to the church.
After Maria delivered her talk, she had her ‘eureka moment’.
The interest her talk generated was considerable. Many people approached her afterwards asking: “How could I get involved?” or “How can we help you to make a difference?”.
Making a practical difference
“The volunteers’ enthusiasm suggested we had local resources to make my idea of a community café for local people with memory problems happen on our doorstep. Working together, we could really make a practical difference”, explains Maria.
Christine Boyd from the Parish of St John’s & The Holy Family took on the role of fellow co-ordinator, ably supported by 20 Young@Heart volunteers from the get-go.
To provide governance to the Young@Heart Café, a Treasurer was appointed and a small co-ordinating committee formed to guide its ongoing development. Young@Heart had only just begun…
Opportunity knocks for volunteers
Our volunteers came from all walks of life. Some with professional backgrounds in health and social care, others whose lives had been impacted by dementia.
Young@Heart has made it easy to volunteer. As Maria puts it: “We wanted to set boundaries but not build obstacles.”
Now the groundwork began. Maria created a Volunteers’ Induction Programme covering information about dementia, health & safety and safeguarding.
The café created opportunities to keep everyone socially engaged and provide respite for local carers respite every Wednesday afternoon.
From the inaugural afternoon, Young@Heart guests have grown and grown, initially through word-of-mouth but increasingly by referrals from health and social care professionals.
How we work
When we notice that a guest’s condition is deteriorating, we speak to family members and signpost them to other services.
Occasionally local care homes visit the café bringing their residents to be part of our community. We all enjoy this interaction and see the Young@Heart Café as offering an opportunity for individuals living in residential care home to remain connected with the community outside of their supported environment.
Book your place - CARE HOMES
To ensure the comfort of all our Young@Heart Café guests, we ask our colleagues from local care homes to book their places to ensure we maintain a comfortable environment for all.
Please call Maria on 07767 880 358 if you want to join us on a Wednesday afternoon. We have a rotating booking system and suggest a maximum of 5 individuals from each care home on different weeks.
“You can go to extremes with impossible dreams”
The Young@Heart Team
MARIA COLLINS
Maria trained and qualified locally as a registered nurse. She worked in London teaching hospitals where she gained promotion in various specialisms including intensive care, infection control and general management.
“Before I entered the world of adult social care I set up a consultancy that focused on commissioning and designing services for NHS organisations and local councils.
Opening the Home Instead Senior Care office in 2010 was memorable with the launch event supported by local MPs, key local influencers and family and friends.
Through my business I worked with many local organisations in the community including the Holy Family and St John’s Parish Luton and they shared my vision for a local dementia cafe to become a reality.”
christine boyd
Christine is a parishioner of Holy Family and St John’s Parish, a reader and Eucharist minister.
Her mother lived with dementia for 4 years before she died in 2016. She wished she had known more about the condition, so she attended a parish meeting led by Maria Collins. The numbers in attendance brought home how much need there was for a local dementia resource.
Maria and Christine joined forces and, with the support of the parish priest, launched Young@Heart Cafe in September 2016 when just 8 people attended.
Now, the Young@Heart Cafe regularly gets 100 guests, including carers, every week.
Christine brings her 35 years of experience in the education sector, including 18 as a headteacher, to organising the Young@Heart musicians and volunteers. She is very involved in fundraising, training, and dementia awareness.