Dementia: Understand Together – Co-creation and roll out of a inclusive community symbol

Description

Dementia: Understand Together is led by the HSE, working with the Alzheimer Society of Ireland (ASI), Age Friendly Ireland, the Dementia Services Information and Development Centre, Age & Opportunity and Healthy Ireland.
The campaign aims to build understanding about dementia and create an Ireland that embraces and includes people with dementia and their families: a key priority action of the National Dementia Strategy.

We are supported by people with dementia, carers, and supporters. We also work with over 40 partner organisations across Ireland ranging from retail, transport, banking, health, voluntary and community sectors who, together with over 600 community champions from all over Ireland, are leading the way in creating dementia inclusive communities. These supporters take actions such as completing staff training, walkability audits, reviewing services, talking about dementia internally and through their networks. All actions combined are helping to change in the dementia culture.

To visually connect action that is being taken across Ireland and to represent culture change around dementia, we developed a dementia inclusive community symbol that will:
• act as an overarching symbol of solidarity, inclusivity and support for people living with dementia
• be a sign that communities, businesses and services are working towards being dementia inclusive.

The symbol was created in consultation with people with dementia, their families, national partners, local community champions, members of the public and the Dementia: Understand Together working group. While the majority of people with dementia live in the community, they may need understanding and support to stay active and engaged. Through the symbol we are sending a strong and visual message that people with dementia and their families are valued and respected members of our communities.

Displaying the symbol does not mean that everyone is an expert in dementia. The symbol simply helps to increase awareness of dementia in our communities and shows how everyone can make a difference by knowing more about dementia and displaying the symbol across businesses and services. The symbol isn’t linked to a certification, but it is a sign of solidarity and that the available resources are there to support organisations to learn more and understand how they can make a difference.

The roll-out is supported by a training programme, a toolkit of resources, ongoing engagement with stakeholders and a national communications campaign. This included (27 Mar – 9th April):
• press release promoting the launch event with Minster Butler T.D. on 28 March,
• 20-second ident ran across Virgin Media One programming (incl. advertising during the ROI v France Euro Qualifying match) for week one.
• out of home advertising including digital out of home
• digital advertising across transport networks, bus shelters, shopping centres
• social media
• paid google search

The launch event was led by people with dementia who are champions of the campaign and involved in the development of the symbol and part of the communications campaign. The day brought together many partners, champions and supporters of the campaign.

Outcomes to date (Mar 28th – June 2023)

140 new community champions have joined the campaign bringing the total number of champions to over 600. We also have had over 2,000 visits to the ‘Get-Involved’ section of the website which was the main call to action for the campaign. Many local dementia alliances and national partners are making plans, including for training, on how best to display and roll-out the symbol within their communities and organisations. The continued commitment and support for the roll out of the symbol by our partners was overwhelming. Organisations such as Irish Rail, Actavo, the Museum of Modern Art (IMMA), AIB, libraries and many more have ordered their window stickers and/or badges for staff members, vans and ticket desks.

People with dementia have said:
“I would be very slow to ask for help when out and about but if I saw that sign on the door I’d have no problem in asking”
“I think it’s going to be a game changer! It’s taking things to a whole new level”
“Inclusive means, we don’t care who you are, you’re welcome”

The campaign was included in the HSE’s June 23 Advertising Tracker which helps to measure recall and reaction to our advertising campaigns from a sample of around 1,000 residents nationally. Results were overwhelming positive. With a two week media burst, 15% of people surveyed recalled seeing the campaign, 87% agreed that communicating about dementia was important and over 1 in 2 would consider becoming a Community Champion.

Aim of Initiative

The dementia inclusive community symbol has been developed to show solidarity and support for people with dementia and their families. It’s hoped it will visually connect all of the many actions being taken across Ireland and to represent culture change around dementia and be a sign that communities, businesses and services are working towards being dementia inclusive.

Who is it aimed at

While we hope the symbol will help to raise awareness of dementia across society, the audience being encouraged to take action to display the symbol are individuals, businesses, organisations and services.

3 Steps critical to success

1. Keeping people with dementia at its heart – The symbol was developed with and for people with dementia and as a result of them wanting to see dementia and themselves represented in their communities.The need for a symbol came about through years of discussion and feedback. There are four key outcomes that people with dementia and their families told us were important to them:
   • That they are understood, respected and valued
   • That local businesses and amenities are responsive to people’s needs
   • That they can stay socially connected and engage in community life if they wish to do so
   • That the built environment is accessible – this includes layout, signage, lighting and access to a quiet space or restroom if available and needed
2. Collaboration and engagement – the campaign would not have worked without partnership. The working group, partner organisations and champions were integral to ensuring this project could be undertaken and its integrity to stand up as a national representation of people with dementia and their families and supporters. They did this by committing their time, resources, providing valuable feedback, setting up briefings, putting us in contact with different colleagues and organisations and simply being passionate about affecting change. A great example of this passion were partners such as Irish Rail, the National Transport Authority and The Irish Museum of Modern Art, offering free advertising space across channels and platforms and locations to accommodate photoshoots for our poster campaign. This included 673 Irish Rail sites across DART, Commuter and Intercity fleet and at stations across the network including Intercity, Dublin City Centre and Dublin’s Connelly, Pearse and Heuston. Transport for Ireland ran the campaign across their full network of Digishelters (bus stops and at stations) and played it 238,000 times.
3. Press and advertising – our work to develop and create the symbol was thorough and widely supported by partners and champions of the campaign, however we needed a paid media campaign to share the symbol with a mass audience.We ran a national media campaign from 27 March-9 April, this included:
   • press release promoting the launch event with Minster Butler T.D. on 28 March,
   • out of home
   • digital out of home
   • digital and print advertising across transport networks, bus shelters, shopping centres
   • social media
   • paid web search
   • 20-second ident ran across Virgin Media One programming (incl. ROI v France Euro Qualifying match) for week one.

   Our creative to support the media plan again kept people with dementia at its core. We used real people living with dementia and their own words to showcase the impact the symbol will have on their day to day lives and overall wellbeing.

3 Challenges in Planning / Delivery

1. Scale of consultation – People with dementia trusted us to be their voice and we needed to ensure the symbol was suitable to meet the campaign needs and remained authentic. This required a large scale consultation process held over a number of months. We hosted online engagement sessions with partners and community champions, people with dementia took part in online and in person engagement sessions facilitated by the Alzheimer’s Society of Ireland (ASI). In addition, we took design options to the National Ploughing Championships where we gathered feedback from more than 150 people in one day.
2. Scale of engagement – While we knew that campaign partners and champions would need support to understand what we were trying to achieve together before displaying the symbol, we also needed to understand how we could support them to use it. This resulted in over 150 conversations, meetings and briefing sessions, facilitated by members of the campaign working group, to understand the practicalities of displaying and making use of the symbol; be it on shop windows and doors, jointly branded point of sale materials or badges worn by staff. The outcome of this work meant that we had enough of the right resources to support people and organisations to become involved and we could give clear guidance.
3. Training and confidence – A gap identified from the engagement element and following feedback from Irish Dementia Working Group members and healthcare professionals, we realised that easy access to training and development would be key to helping people feel confident to display the symbol. This helped us to prioritise a piece of work we had planned around improving our training section of the website, which has been mapped and streamlined, so that people can easily access training and advice or be redirected to appropriate partners. It also became a more focussed part of our offering to partners and champions as they were planning to implement the symbol into their own operations.

3 Outcomes / Benefits

1. Improved awareness of dementia – Our vision is to help create an Ireland that embraces and includes people living with dementia, and displays solidarity with them and their families. By raising awareness of dementia in our communities and actively supporting people to understand how they can make a difference, we can support people with dementia to have confidence, to retain some of their independence and routine where appropriate, be that attending appointments, using their bank or traveling by public transport.
2. Greater social inclusion and connection – Dementia is not simply a health issue, but a social issue that requires a community response. Health and wellbeing is closely linked to the social engagement we have in our communities, many studies, anecdotal stories and our experiences of the last years during a pandemic speak to this. Social isolation is often more likely for a person with dementia and staying socially active and engaged can help in many ways. As well as slowing the progression of dementia, it can positively affect mood and a person’s overall health and wellbeing. It also opens up opportunities for people to remain connected and keep up activities and hobbies. Whether someone wants to meet a friend for coffee or make a visit to a gallery or feel able to get involved and join in with local clubs and groups.
3. Representation – Bringing together all of the great work being done across the county to build and grow dementia inclusive communities. Whether that’s healthcare professionals supporting people with dementia, volunteers working with people with dementia or carers looking to improve access to services and support in their communities. Business and services who might not previously have had much awareness or understanding of dementia are using our training offer and support to become more accessible and inclusive to everyone.