Dementia café set up to support Kent's Sikh community
It's based at the Guru Nanak Darbar Gurdwara in Gravesend
Last updated 2nd Jul 2024
A dementia café, aiming to support Kent's Sikh community, has been set up in Gravesend.
Based at Guru Nanak Darbar Gurdwara, the café will support those who are worried about or struggling with the disease.
Currently 25,000 people suffer with the disease in the UK. This number is expected to double by 2026 with the steepest increase expected in those from South Asian communities.
Katie Antill is from Alzheimer's and Dementia Support Services. They set up the group and she believes it will be crucial for those in North Kent.
She said: "Gravesend has a large Sikh community, and we had a lot of people contacting us that a mother or father had dementia and they felt like they had no support.
"It became really important to us that we set up a dedicated service so we could address some of the barriers that people were experiencing.
"Such as there being no word for dementia in Punjabi, which translated to 'madness of the brain', perpetuating that stigma.
"Language is also a real problem because they believe they wouldn't be understood as they can only speak Punjabi. This is why we felt we needed a real targeted approach for this."
The café opened it's doors for the first time on Thursday 20th June. The dementia session will be held twice a month, for two hours, for those looking for support and help.
The next meet up will be on Thursday 4th June.
Speaking to us about the response to the idea, Katie said: "We had one lovely lady, who was hugging us because she was so please. She said 'we felt so neglected but now we feel loved again'. It was really heart warming and lovely.
"Our ultimate aim is to help people get the diagnosis they need but this really could be the springboard to more work with lots of other different communities that are going to be impacted by dementia going forward and currently not getting the support they need."