Roll up for the Virtual Dementia Tour

As part of Alzheimer’s Awareness Month, Young@Heart Café volunteers took part in a Virtual Dementia Tour -  an interactive experience which demonstrates how it might feel to live with dementia.

Maria Collins, Owner of Home Instead Luton, set up the experience to give local volunteers the opportunity to physically experience some of the struggles that many with dementia live with every day.

The interactive experience, run by Training2Care, uses technology to alter the senses, replicating the ways in which dementia sufferers see the world and experience daily activities.

Maria commented:

“The Virtual Dementia Tour is a great way for individuals to experience the effects that dementia has on people’s daily lives and helps our caregivers and volunteers to really understand the simple ways in which they could aid those living with the disease.”

A Young @ Heart café volunteer said:

“I found the Virtual Dementia Tour really enlightening. At the café, we see many seniors each week who are living with dementia, and the tour has made me much more aware of how they must be feeling or how they are experiencing their daily activities.

September was Alzheimer’s awareness month, and this was a great way to increase awareness around dementia as a disease and how it affects people differently and individually.”

Alzheimer’s Research UK report that there are 850,000 people living with dementia in the UK, with this number only increasing.