Dementia Action Week 2020 – thank you for your support

Thank you to everyone who supported Dementia Action Week 2020! We are grateful for everyone who shared, liked, commented and downloaded or used the tools we released each day of the week across our social media channels. We were overwhelmed by the number of people who engaged with the campaign in various ways, who visited the website and who downloaded the tools that were made available throughout the week. We are also so grateful to the Dementia Advocates who shared their stories throughout the week. We couldn’t have done it without you!

For Dementia Action Week 2020, our focus was on continuing the conversation around dementia and discrimination and debunking commonly-held misconceptions. The concept for Dementia Action Week 2020, 'A little support makes a lot of difference', was developed in consultation with Dementia Advocates, who have a lived experience of dementia.

During the week, we released seven tips to show how a little support can make a positive difference in the lives of people living with dementia. The seven tips list some simple, yet effective, ways to support people living with dementia to live well for as long as possible.

• Make home life easier for me with a few smart changes
• Give me a little space to do things for myself
• Listen to me, don’t always try to solve my problems
• Give me a minute to find the right words
• Remind me with clever technology
• Help me plan my own social life
• Encourage me to stay active and healthy

We also developed a range of resources for each tip, including an online home improvement tool to create a dementia-friendly home and a digital memory book to help access positive memories.

A special thanks to the wonderful Dementia Advocates who generously shared their stories of how discrimination has impacted on their lives, and how little support can make a lot of difference.

Dementia Action Week 2020 is not the end of our campaign to inspire a shift in the conversation about dementia and discrimination. The full list of tips and tools is now available on dementia.org.au/dementia-action-week and we will continue the discussion in all our forums. You can also find some of the results of the 2019 discrimination survey at the link above.