News

The Huffington Post has recently featured Active Minds, the article highlights some of the challenges facing people with dementia and the work we are doing to improve their quality of life.

The piece begins by looking at the ‘dementia crisis’ and the ongoing government support that aims to help tackle some of the issues. This was followed by Ben’s personal experience of caring for his grandfather and setting up Active Minds. We hope this will help inspire other to join the fight against dementia.

To read the full article click here.

After a hugely successful partnership this year UnLtd has decided to continue its support into 2013. Active Minds has managed to outperform its intial Social Impact targets, helping to improve the quality of life of over 5200 people in 2012. As a result UnLtd have decided to continue their support and have offered £20,000 of addition funding to help grow the business and hopefully double our social impact in 2013!

We are all extremely grateful for UnLtd support and look forward to working together next year.

A recent study published in the Stroke journal showed that people who remained physically active in older age reduced their risk of developing vascular related dementia by 40%.

The study was a three year European research project carried out over 639 people in their 60’s and 70’s. Of those 64% remained physically active for at least 30 minutes a day three times a week. This included walking, aerobics classes and bike rides.

The study shows that regular excise combined with a healthy diet can help to significantly reduce the risk of developing dementia.

To find out more click here

Active Minds has recently been featured on the Guardians Social Care Network, a forum for professional carers.

The piece looks at the benefits of keeping people living with dementia physically and mentally active. Referring to the Department of Health and Alzheimer’s Society research that shows regular mental and physical stimulation can help to reduce the dependency on Anti-Psychotic medication and improve quality of life.

Ben shared his experience of caring for his grandfather, who had dementia, and how it inspired him to set up Active Minds.

The article sparked an overwhelming positive response from the professional care community, to read the article in full click here

After 6 months of research and testing Active Minds is launching its latest activity product, a painting book for people with dementia. Each book has a selection of 40 clear, simple illustrations that have been developed and tested with Barchester Healthcare.

With just a brush and some paint all users can enjoy the satisfaction of creating these beautiful images, without assistance, again and again. Easily photocopied for group sessions, Paint Project is an effective and reusable tool for anyone wanting to provide engaging and meaningful activities for people living with dementia.

During final testing early this month the product proved a big hit with residents and carers alike. The images engaged the residence and helped stimulate memories and interesting conversations. Paint Project is now on sale for £12.50 and already proving a big hit in the run up to Christmas.

Sheena Wyllie, Director of Dementia Services at Barchester care homes, said: ‘We are wholly committed to improving and enhancing lives of people living with a dementia. It’s creative and quality products like these that can add to an individual’s day-to-day enjoyment.’

For more information or to order a copy please click here.

Active Minds has partnered with ‘Oomph!’ to promote and distribute its activity products for people with dementia.

Oomph! is the UK’s largest provider of exercise-based therapy for people with dementia. Currently working with over 300 nursing and residential homes across the country, delivering exercise programs to over 7,500 people per month.

Ben Allen who founded the company in 2011 felt: “The music-based activities we provide in care homes are proven to help people with dementia, so if care homes can complement these with activities designed specifically with dementia sufferers in mind, then it is a win, win situation for everyone.”

There are many synergies between the two businesses, which we hope will help to increase the number of people with dementia that have access to our products.

If you would like to find out more about Oomph! classes please click here.

Over the past week Alice has continued the development of our new painting book designed for people with Dementia and Alzheimer’s, which now has a selection of 25 images.

Today was the second round of testing at Ashford House, where we hoped to see promising results from the new and improved designs. The residents enjoyed another great day, with the enhanced range of images ensuring there was something for everyone – regardless of the level of dementia.

A number of useful observations were made which will be incorporated into the image designs as we continue to improve them. The key here is getting the balance right between suitably adult images and an appropriate level of complexity for our audience.

Over the next seven days each image will be refined and an additional 15 designs will be added, before further testing of the final 40 images.

As ever we are keen to hear your ideas for images so please get in touch ahead of the production deadline, which is looming near!

Ben and Alice Moloney, our illustrator, have been to Ashford House in north London to begin testing some initial designs for our next product – a painting book for people with dementia and Alzheimer’s disease.

A selection of 8 images were trailed with a range of people of varying abilities; to help establish the most appropriate designs, compositions, and complexity of each image. Everyone involved enjoyed the day and the results were extremely interesting, giving us a lot of work to do before more testing next week.

Most importantly we have seen the therapeutic benefits that art can have. One of the residence was delighted he had found his ‘artistic gene’ aged 86. Wendy Ward, the activities co-ordinators, said that painting is a regular activity in the home but there is real lack of suitable resources on the market.

Overall a promising start and we are looking forward to testing our developments next week. We’ll let you know how it goes.

Due to the increasing requests from customers, Active Minds has begun to develop its latest product – a colouring book for people living with dementia.

Current products on the market are either much to difficult or childish. We feel there is a gap for an age appropriate colour/painting book that will be achievable as well as give the user a sense of satisfaction and pride. A request that has been made many times by our customers.

Initial ideas have already been developed and we’ve partnered with Ashford House, part of the Barchester Group, to begin testing this week. Further testing and development will continue throughout August, and we will keep you updated with progress.  We hope this research will help us create an age appropriate resource that will be achievable but not patronising. Art sessions are already a regular activity in care homes across the country, so a more specialist product developed for people with dementia should be extremely popular.

If you have any ideas for images you would like to see in the book please get in touch.

At the end June Salterbaxter kindly offered Active Minds a free day of design consultation to support the fight against dementia.

Salterbaxter is an internationally renowned communications company who work with Europe’s largest companies, including Adidias, Sky and Nokia. The goal was to improve Active Minds branding to help convey the companies’ social targets. In doings so we hope that more people living with dementia will see the benefit of our products.

The day was a great success; we had 14 of Salterbaxters employee’s all working on Active Minds. Many had personal experience of dementia and were keen to help as much as possible. After the day we had the initial ideas for our new website, as well as the basis of a platform to allow our customers to leave feedback and share their own experiences and ideas.

Since then some of the consultants have offered to continue working on the project in their spare time, helping to deliver some of the outcomes.

We are very grateful for all Salterbaxters support so far and we will keep you updated as the projects develops. If you would like to learn more about Salterbaxter click here.