In 2012 we want to make an even bigger difference to people living with dementia in Essex.

And YOU can help. We need individuals like yourselves to come up with ideas to help us raise funds.

We really want you to come on board with your help and ideas . We promise to support and promote anybody with the passion to make a difference.

Don’t wait e-mail your contact details and ideas to debbie@essexdementiacare.org.uk and we will be straight back to you.

A Big thank you to the managers at the Hoy and Helmet Benfleet for hosting a quiz nite to benefit Essex Dementia Care.
Our team came a respectable third place and a good night was had by all.



The Management of the Hoy and Helmet Public House in Benfleet are kindly hosting a Quiz night to raise funds for Essex Dementia Care on Wednesday  25th January 2012

A HUGE thank you to Copybest & the Lions

Copybest Essex Ltd, delivered EDC a new colour printer on Monday.  Chris Riggall from the sales dept., and his colleague delivered the large printer with much huffing and puffing and wondering whether they would have to take the door off…. !   Luckily they didn’t and we now have installed our lovely new printer. The Lions Club of Braintree raised £500 to pay for the printer and all we have to pay for are the copies and the paper!   The office staff here at EDC are looking forward to printing leaflets, posters, newsletters and the new brochure. Here EDC Operations Director Gerry Moore & Care Manager Debbie Davis thank Copybest.

NEWSLETTER NOVEMBER

Please click on the link above to read our Newsletter!

Essex Dementia Care will be exhibiting at the Health & Wellbeing Show at the Mill Arts & Events Centre (Mill Hall) in Rayleigh, on Thursday 17th November from 10.00am to 2.00pm.

The event is being organised by Rayleigh, Rochford & District Association for Voluntary Services (RRAVS) in partnership with NHS SE Essex Primary Care Trust.

Our Road Show on 6 August in Braintree went well. Sharon (below) survived her bean bath challenge and we raised over £1000; more contributions are still coming in.

It was a great day; fun was had by all and, much more important, we made contact with a number of local families who are living with dementia and in need of support.

Les Littler, our intrepid Snowdon mountaineer (in action, below), presented us with a cheque for an amazing £1514, raised from his recent sponsored climb. Les – thank you – you’re a star! Les said he was more tired after 8 hours rattling collection boxes with us than he was after his climb.

Councillor Janet Money, chairman of Braintree District Council very kindly came along to add some civic weight to the occasion. We much appreciated her interest and participation.

Essex Chronicle and the Braintree and Witham Times came along too, and the Chronicle gave us a big spread on page three. Numerous jokes about page three girls have been forthcoming!

Come along and join us for our fun-packed road show on Saturday 6 August at the George Yard Shopping Centre, Braintree. Find out more about Essex Dementia Care, with a chance to meet and speak with our director and founder Dr Tessa Perrin PhE, MSc, DipCOT. There will also be a raffle and a lucky dip – and you can sponsor our Sharon to sit in a bath of beans from 9am until 4pm! Unmissable! Download the event flyer.

We’ve set up a Just Text Giving campaign (ready for the Essex Dementia Care Show on Saturday 6 August – see post below). To give on your mobile, all you need to do is text EDCC42 £10 (or any amount you wish to donate, and any message) to 70070. It’s as simple as that!

You are invited to the launch of a new service at Rayleigh for all carers and families living with dementia. It’ll be a fun-packed day, including a chance to see Essex Dementia Care in action. There will be a free buffet lunch, a raffle and a gift pack. Watch ‘Rhythm for Health’, a colour, movement and sound experience, and take your partners for a 50s and 60s Golden Oldie’s Social Tea Dance, with Saul Watts.

The venue is the Lounge at the rear of Rayleigh Baptist Church, High Road, Rayleigh, SS6 7QA. The programme: 11am Meet and Greet, 12.30 Buffet Lunch, 1.30pm Social Tea Dance. Download the event flyer.

We are delighted to welcome Michelle Reynolds as our new office manager. This is a rather delayed welcome; Michelle actually joined us as a volunteer at the beginning of the year, but our financial considerations have meant that we have only recently been able to offer her a formal position. Michelle has been working very hard to get our rather chaotic admin systems into some semblance of order.

It has been very good for Debbie and Tessa to be able to relinquish some of the load into capable hands, and very good for the developing consolidation of our Essex Dementia Care infrastructure. Thank you Michelle for all you are contributing.  If you need to contact her, Michelle works mostly on Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays between 11am and 5pm; she is on our main office number 01245 363789 or at michelle@essexdementiacare.org.uk.

We seem to live in a world of acronyms these days! A phone call out of the blue a few months ago introduced us to the Charity Classic Vehicle Club, who had chosen us as recipient of the proceeds from their most recent fund-raising event. Check their website out – they do some extraordinary fund-raising stuff for charities in the Essex Area.

At the beginning of the month Debbie and Sharon went over to Kelvedon Hatch on what was possibly the coldest day since February (see photos below!) to be a part of CCVC’s autojumble event. It was a disappointing turnout because of the weather, but despite that, chairman Alan Osborn and his club colleagues were able to present us yesterday with an extraordinarily generous cheque for £1000.  Thank you Alan and friends for your kindness and your support.

I left an envelope sitting on my desk for a couple of days the other week, thinking it was an unimportant circular. When I eventually opened it I discovered a cheque for £500, sent to us anonymously via the Charities Aid Foundation. Amazing!  And very heart-warming.

The only problem with anonymous gifts is that there is no-one to whom we can say thank you . Hence this brief post. I have no idea who the donor is or how they know about us; but I hope that they take a look at the website from time to time – and so know how very much appreciated their gift is.

We have just heard during this past week that Essex County Council has come up trumps for us again. The two grants received last year which have helped us to extend the work in Braintree and south Essex have been made available for a further year.

This is really good news and means that we can move ahead with confidence and creativity, and look at new ways to meet the needs of people with dementia in these localities. Many thanks to ECC.

We are also indebted to Bob (below left) and to Andrew (below right) for enabling us to settle in to our new office and get up and running comfortably.

Bob has his own company called Niglibits (does what it says on the tin) and has helped us with all those niggly bits which you need sorting when you move into a new home. Bob seems to be able to do anything in the DIY line and has fixed stuck doors, hung blinds and whiteboards and, perhaps most important, solved the problem of a disconcerting ‘fragrance’ that (according to our predecessors) has been bothersome for years. Bob also sings and is a karaoke jockey (though not while DIY-ing) and has helped us out on several occasions at the drop-in centre. So if you want a niggly thing fixed or you need an entertainer, Bob’s your man. You can contact him on 01787 224128 or at bob.tuck1@btopenworld.com.

Andrew of 4Tek has become our IT man and has done a wonderful job of getting our computers up-to-date and up and running; it has been an enormous relief to have him around. He’s always happy to be on call and has been extremely generous with both time and equipment. If you need knowledgeable and reliable support, you can contact Andrew on 01376 310620 or at www.4tek.co.uk.

Actually not that new – it’s just taken us a long while to get round to posting this. We have been rapidly growing out of Tessa’s home office, our domicile for the last 4 years, and in need of space where we can work together.

The office (not beautiful to be sure – but functional) found us and we moved in at the beginning of December, just in time for the worst of the snow and ice. It’s not a public convenience – although you could be forgiven for thinking that (see pic below). It’s a portakabin: it’s cheap and it gives us all the desk and storage space we need. A lick of paint and a new carpet over Christmas has made it habitable.

Special thanks to Pete ‘The Carpet’ for that, and also to David Brooks of Amaryllis Environmental Services in Chelmsford. Amaryllis recycles unwanted office furniture – free to charities – and David has equipped us with every single office item we have needed. We probably have several thousand pounds-worth of office furniture now in residence. Thank you David – we are very much obliged.

Essex Dementia Care has a opened a second drop-in day centre, this one in Rayleigh, Essex. It’s for anyone living with dementia. The Rayleigh centre is open on Wednesdays, and is based at Rayleigh Baptist Church, High Road Rayleigh. You can come with your loved one, or you can leave them with us. More info on our Oasis Centres page.

Another Georgina has been in touch recently. Georgina Whiting is a beauty therapist who has opened a new practice in Writtle, and she has recently donated half the proceeds of a recent ‘Pamper Evening’ to Essex Dementia Care. Georgina is experiencing dementia in her own family, and we have been very touched by this kind gesture. We perhaps should also say here that if anyone out there wants a little pampering themselves and lives in the Chelmsford/Writtle area, Georgina would be glad to hear from you. You can contact her at www.beautybygeorgina.com or georgina@beautybygeorgina.com. Her tel no is 01245 422244 or 07852 317290.

November 1^st saw the opening of a new venture for Essex Dementia Care – a drop-in centre for carers and cared-for in Braintree (details coming – new page under construction). We have wanted for some time to offer a service which complements our existing one-to-one support and which can respond more flexibly to the needs of our families.

The opening saw lots of friends and associates joining us for the day. April Lawlor, one of our trustees, formally opened the centre describing how this new endeavour sits within the broader scheme of local and national dementia care developments. Nick Forsyth and Sean Weigand from Lambert Chapman made a formal presentation of their donation, as did Vicky Weavers, who is proving a kind and enthusiastic champion of our cause.

It was good to have the Braintree and Witham Times there; they got the message slightly wrong, omitting to mention that the centre is for those with dementia as well as their carers, but otherwise gave us a good write-up and photo.