Lisa's Story - Carer information and support programme - Lloyds live well campaign

The cares information and support programme also known as CrISP is for friends and families of people living with dementia so that they can have the right tools for supporting the person that they care for as there dementia progresses. So the idea of CrISP is that carers come to it not knowing much about dementia feeling quite afraid and leave feeling like they, it's not quite such a scary thing anymore they know what they need to do, they know where they can get support and they have make links with people so that they are not alone anymore. It gives people a sense of community and a sense of, that its manageable and you can live well with it. It's usually four workshops most often over four weeks and the idea is that in those workshops carers of people living with sort of mild dementia or who have had a recent, recently the person has been diagnosed with dementia, come along to them to find out more about dementia and to get information that will allow them to sort of plan in advance and understand the changes and that their lives might change for the person that they support might change and with relationships as well so that they can have the tools that they need to provide care. In the first week everyone comes in and they are a bit unsure of what's going on what's going to happen and then they gradually get to know each other and understand how workshops are designed and how they work and they relax and they start talking to each other and they notice the similarities in their experiences and by the end, the last session, they are chatting and it's a completely different atmosphere which is lovely, it's really nice to see. I think it's very exciting that Lloyds want to support this its something that can effect absolutely anyone at any time and to have such a big organisation interested in supporting people living with it and realising how important it is and the impact it has on peoples lives it's brilliant. So locally we are going to have two sessions of CrISP run by, from the funding from Lloyds in an area where there isn't any at the moment, or one session a year which is very very little and it just it means that more people can get support which is brilliant.