Stirling is joining the international movement to make our cities and environments better for people with dementia and their carers. Research has shown that small changes in the environment and in the behaviour of people can make a huge difference, on top of the continued work done by health, social services and private and third sector organisations to improve services. Home of the world famous Dementia Services Development Centre, Stirling is in the early stages of planning to be the most dementia-friendly city in the world. Discussion with health and social care leaders has been enthusiastic and more formal plans will be set out in the next six months. Stirling starts by building on the resources that exist locally. The first step is to be a scoping study of all the initiatives that are already in place. With this in mind, if you know of anything that should be included in this study in the Stirling area, email us at
dementia@stir.ac.uk. We also want to know about good ideas from other cities and communities that we can build into our plans here. The Director of the Stirling Dementia Services Development Centre Professor June Andrews said, "We've been working here for about a quarter of a century and people come to visit us from all other the world to find out about dementia - about a thousand a month on average. It's the right time to focus on this proud and historic city and show how dementia care can be."
