Setting up your Help Point
Any community group that supports people living with dementia can become a Help Point. Community centres, GP surgeries, libraries and more. Our Help Point network is as diverse as the people that we want to help.
Help Points can be a physical location where people can pick up leaflets and materials about making a personal playlist, but many organisations have found new ways of connecting with their service users over the phone or digitally with technology such as Zoom. No matter how you reach your community, there are multiple ways for you to set up your Help Point and share the power of personal music.
“We run a Telephone connect cafe twice monthly. In addition to the reminiscing conversations we also play music for people to sing along to. We have been choosing music from Playlist for life’s 100 Years Book playlists. We find it very helpful. Our volunteers who are in their late teens and 20s are discovering songs they have never heard of before, while our older participants are singing away to Perry Como and Max Bygraves! Wonderful.”
“A personal playlist not only benefits the person living with dementia but also their caregiver as the music takes them back to happy memories, whilst enhancing quality of life and wellbeing. You can almost hear the smile on people’s faces when they are talking about their playlist over the phone.”
“Each week we have a theme and invite people to suggest a song or tune and we sing along and talk about our memories. Friends of mine who join us weekly are musicians and we’ve been really fortunate to be joined by a violinist, a singer and a flautist as well. It’s been really lovely.”
Using your Help Point materials
Watch the video below to find out how Charlie from one of our London Help Points incorporates our materials into her online sessions with people living with dementia.
