Sharing expertise and experience in best practice, best in class volunteer programmes supporting people living with dementia, to create moments that matter for those people, through engagement, connections and socialisation. We wanted to showcase Saint Joseph's Shankill's award-winning volunteer programme. Sharing knowledge, fostering relationships internationally, and developing best practices in care for people living with dementia supported by volunteers. SJS wanted to validate its volunteer programme through participation in this project. HOPE also wanted to develop volunteering in care homes in Portugal. Both organisations wanted to share their learning to improve the quality of life of people living in care homes in Ireland and across Europe and beyond. We wanted to create tangible outputs that could be shared nationally, regionally and further afield to support the development of volunteering especially in care homes and for people living with dementia. We have succeeded to impact our priorities of social inclusion, participation and active citizenship (volunteering), and enhanced the community support of people living with dementia and their families/carers and fostered a community that supports human rights.
The work developed in partnership within this project has allowed SJS to validate its volunteering model and, with the external insights provided by HOPE, create a detailed volunteer charter for care homes more adapted to the specific needs of people with dementia and the volunteers who accompany them, as well as a training manual for volunteer training (A1; A2), helping volunteers in Portugal to develop the skills necessary for a humanised and individualised intervention with people living with dementia. HOPE has reinforced its knowledge in this area, but also has developed a pilot training activity for volunteers (A3), based on the manual, validating the effectiveness of the manual in a practice, but also its potential for scalability and implementation across Europe. These volunteers will be integrated into organisations where people living with dementia reside. SJS has learned from HOPE’s approach to developing community programmes and has in turn implemented this learning in their volunteer and community programmes. Both SJS, and HOPE (a “newcomer”) have had the opportunity to develop skills in terms of European cooperation and exchange of good practices and knowledge at an international level.