Sage House dementia hub is under ten minutes away from my home in West Sussex. As soon as neighbours heard that I had an interest in the condition they kept telling me to visit it, and one sunny afternoon a year or so ago I popped along.
I wasn’t disappointed. The hub, in Tangmere near Chichester, is said to be the first of its kind in the UK, and is located in a light, airy building of dementia-friendly coloured zones, wide passageways, Daisy’s café and numerous meeting rooms for everything from legal advice on drawing up wills and powers of attorney to hairdressing, massages and art, from Citizens Advice Bureau sessions and dementia assessment clinics to Reiki, quizzes and singing.
The idea is to provide a one-stop hub to give all the various services that someone diagnosed with dementia and his or her family might need – and – and this is crucial – one person (a Wayfinder) to help them navigate their way around the mind-boggling health, financial and social care systems.
All this costs money. The hub must raise £1million a year and it has just launched its Christmas appeal – between now and 13 December any money donated will be generously doubled by Match Fund Champions.
You can hear just how much Sage House means to families by watching the videos that some of them have made. Fiona, whose mum has dementia, describes it as “an absolute lifesaver”, a safe space where people understand what she and her loved ones are going through, and you can see her above, talking about their experiences.
So impressed have I been by Sage House that I invited Sally Tabbner, its charismatic chief executive and Ronnie Patmore, one of its volunteers, to be guests on my Well I Know Now dementia podcast just a few weeks ago. When I last looked the dynamic duo were top of my listener charts for this series, their double act proved popular!
Sally is passionate about what she does and Ronnie is – well, Ronnie is a one-off, an old-school charmer and his late wife Dolly, who lived with dementia, used Sage House in her final years.
And if you’d like to spread a little happiness this Christmas, why not donate, sound in the knowledge that your contribution will be doubled if you do so before 13 December.
