The Memory Café Helping People with Alzheimer's 'live well' in Swansea!

“We all know it’s not going to get easier.” Diane Harris is speaking at a special ‘memory cafe’ in Waunarlwydd for people with dementia. She goes there with her friend Valerie Tarry, who has been diagnosed with the disease, for company and often a sing-a-long.

“I always say to her, ‘what do you want for your coffee? I can’t remember.’ I know, but I make sure that she knows as well. So we sort of help each other, me and Val,” added Diane, 70.

Valerie, 84, lost her husband just a few months ago. After he died, her friends rallied around to make sure she still got out of the house and socialised. And since it launched earlier this year, they have been visiting the memory cafe, which was set up to support people with a dementia diagnosis and to offer respite for those who care for them.

Sitting in a church hall in Waunarlywdd, Swansea, they and others who are either living with dementia or caring for someone living with the condition, sing along to songs like Danny Boy and Blue Suede Shoes, and play games which help with memory and co-ordination. Valerie said: “I like to be able to meet people and just relax and enjoy myself.“

The free sessions, organised by Home Instead, also include activities like tai chi, sing-alongs and soft sports.

Diane shared her fears about her friend potentially becoming aggressive or violent in the later stages of her dementia. As a person’s dementia progresses, they can sometimes behave aggressively which can be distressing for the person and those caring for them. This behaviour can range from verbal aggression, such as swearing, shouting and making threats, to actual physical aggression like hitting, punching or even biting, according to the Alzheimer’s Society.

But Singing for the Brain leader for the Alzheimer’s Society, Lorraine King, said the sessions were a safe space where people knew they would not be judged as they could be loud and use their voice. “People think that when dementia happens that it’s the end and it’s not. The point is to live well with dementia and to give people hope you need to get people together,” said the singer-songwriter and part-time charity worker who visited the memory cafe this week to host the sing-along session.

Music is used in Lorraine’s sessions as a tool to bring back memories for people living with dementia and over the years she has seen amazing results from those who get involved. With her cheeky sense of humour and a guitar in hand, Lorraine is a bundle of energy who can get a whole room singing along with her in minutes.

In the later stages of dementia, people living with the condition are more likely to have issues with speech, from repeating the same phrase or sound, to having no speech at all. Lorraine described one man she once worked with in her sessions as a former musician who was “quite locked in and wasn’t able to speak, but we knew that he was in there.

“Then one day after a few sessions I sang a song that really resonated with him. It was Joni Mitchell’s Both Sides Now and he sang the entire thing – all the words. He hadn’t spoken in years.”