Lisa welcomed everyone and started promptly as there was a very busy agenda. We had 29 members this evening. Lisa started with news and updates. She repeated the news about the unpaid carers she mentioned at the earlier dementia club session and also about Adam Purnell the care home manager in Lancashire and the 2 articles as mentioned before.

Lisa gave thanks to Maurice one of the carers who emails Lisa the articles as soon as he reads them.

Lisa then informed members that she had invited Professor David Jefferys and he was attending the carers group session on Tuesday 16th March. Everyone was very pleased to hear the news.

Lisa also had some news to pass on from another carer who informed her that whilst her own carer was not working because her mother was recovering in hospital, she was happy to offer her carer to someone else for a few weeks.

Lisa then mentioned the wonderful feedback she was receiving about the seminars that Andrew Wrensch was delivering and mentioned that a couple of people had asked whether it was possible to record the seminars. Lisa informed everyone that she had looked into this and after discussing this with her Trustees, it was decided that it would not be a good idea as there may be Privacy issues and we also need to be careful as a registered charity that we don’t get into any trouble with the charity commission.

Lisa then introduced a short video clip of Dr John Campbell talking about Vitamin D and how this is processed in the human body. As the video is 30 minutes we only had time to show about 12 minutes but Lisa assured everyone that she would provide the URL for everyone to see the full video in their own. The video raised some questions about how much Vitamin D is sufficient and someone mentioned their recent blood test revealed that they had too much Vitamin D. Dr Angela advised that when someone is advised of their vitamin D levels they should ask for the numbers and also ask for a hormone test if the level is too high.

Dr Angela said that she would also look into this further for next week

It was now 7.30pm and Lisa welcomed Andrew and also Margaret Fell Colle – the Admiral Nurse who has attended a few times before.

Andrew’s seminar today was about ‘Sleep Disturbance and dementia care’.

Andrew went through his slides and was then ready for questions and answers. There were quite a few questions. The seminar was very interesting and informative providing lots of good advice about what foods are helpful and about the importance of having enough hours of sleep and how to help those with dementia who do not understand night and day. One of the members also mentioned about an Army trick which helps her fall asleep in 2 minutes called ‘The American Sleep’. Lisa and all the members thanked Andrew.

Next week’s seminar decided was – “Wellbeing & Activities”