Forget Me Not is a specialist dementia intensive care service based in Worthing, serving the wider community of Sussex. The team at Forget Me Not work creatively to support people staying with them to experience joy and peace at a time they are experiencing intense distress. In addition to specialist clinical intervention, this is achieved through providing beautiful garden spaces, creative activities like arts, crafts, games and music as well as cookery. After consulting with service users, families and carers the team at Forget Me Not identified a need for a cooker and the reconfiguration of their 'Activities of Daily Living (ADL)room to make it possible. The cooker was purchased using charitable funds and installed, enabling the team to introduce a lunch club and enhance the current group activity programme.
Service users and staff can now work together to create meals and enjoy baking to share together. For someone living with dementia it is really important to continue to engage in the daily living skills they had always previously been able to do. For some it may bring back memories of cooking for a family, for others the joy of baking and icing cakes and for some it might be the opportunity to try something new. By purchasing an electric cooker to be used in the ADL room, we can enable people using our services to carry on their previously normal daily activities in a safe, supportive and fun way. Cooking in the ADL kitchen can be a serious occasion for the high brow chef or a time of riotous laughter and singing for the carefree bakers.
