National Dementia Strategyengaging through storytelling

About Dementia recently submitted their response on the new National Dementia Strategy to the Scottish Government, following extensive consultation with our members, people living with dementia, unpaid carers and professionals.

The team went on a roadshow around Scotland hearing directly the views of people living with dementia to help inform the strategy response. They visited 14 grassroots community-based organisations across Scotland and engaged with 267 people including 83 people living with dementia, 84 unpaid carers and 100 community workers and professionals. To allow for multiple opportunities to share views, we organised 5 online engagement sessions and 14 in-person sessions and launched an interactive National Dementia Strategy engagement pack, to enable community groups to conduct their own engagement activity.

Some of the conversations were around tricky topics that could be sensitive or emotive for participants to talk about so, instead of asking people directly to share their experiences, the team created characters and storylines on relevant topics and asked participants to give advice to these fictionalised characters using postcards and other creative tools. Using the input of all the people who took part in sessions and shared their views, the dementia team compiled their consultation response and submitted it to the Scottish Government.

Thank you to everyone with lived experience who played a part in shaping our response – your voices really do matter!