DSRS Project Windup Summary

After five years, the Dementia Supports in Rural Saskatchewan project – taking place in Yorkton, Melville, and the surrounding rural communities –  has come to an end. Our Public Awareness Coordinator, Erica Zarazun, attended the wind-up summit in June to help celebrate and reflect on contributions made to the project area, including those from the Alzheimer Society of Saskatchewan.

The summit brought the project’s collaborating organizations together to discuss their key learnings/takeaways, plans to sustain their initiatives for people impacted by dementia in Yorkton, Melville, and area, and strategies to better navigate the health care system.

The discussions provided a valuable opportunity for collaborating organizations, participants, and advisory group members to discuss the state of dementia care and resources in Saskatchewan, as well as how we could better support people living with dementia in Saskatchewan. Some common themes that emerged during the discussions were:

• The need for more awareness, education, and supports for living well with dementia across the province.
• The importance of advocating for people living with dementia.
• Getting past the stigma around dementia because there is still shame felt around receiving a dementia diagnosis.
• The need for more connection across healthcare providers and supports for people experiencing dementia.
• The importance of dementia friendly community initiatives that make our interactions and environments more inclusive, welcoming, and accessible.
• The need for more volunteers for support programs.
• How critical the programs and services of the Alzheimer Society are for people living with dementia.

The Alzheimer Society of Saskatchewan’s role in this project centered around building dementia friendly communities and raising awareness of Alzheimer’s disease and other dementia in the project area around Yorkton, SK.

Our Public Awareness Coordinator presented on the Society’s project outcomes and sustainability plan. We were proud to highlight our efforts, successes, and how this project gave us the opportunity to extend and focus support in the Yorkton and Melville area. Through the efforts of our Dementia Community Coordinator, Jackie Hofstrand, we were able to engage 28 different organizations from 20 communities over the course of the project.

Throughout the efforts of this project, we’ve developed toolkits for multiple different community sectors. With the support of Parkland Valley Sport Culture and Recreation District we developed the “Friendly Communities Healthy People” toolkit for recreation facilities, as well as toolkits for libraries and pharmacies.

Other collaborating organizations and their projects included:

• SaskAbilities- Dementia Friendly Life Enrichment Program
• City of Yorkton- Public Indoor Facility Audit
• Godfrey Dean Art Gallery- Belong Where You Find Yourself
• RaDAR- Memory Clinics
• University of Saskatchewan- Cognitive Kitchen
• University of Saskatchewan- Creating a Dementia Friendly Community in Ile a la Cross

You can learn more about these projects here.

Dementia Friendly Communities- Sustainability Plan

To sustain the efforts that the Alzheimer Society of Saskatchewan made during this project, we intend to highlight multiple ongoing relationships with Collaborating Organizations from the project.

They include the efforts of Amber Harvey and the Yorkton Public Library, Joan Michael and Saltcoats library, and the multiple rural communities that engaged dementia friendly initiatives as case studies in our upcoming resources, including the knowledge hub and the library toolkit redesign.

We also hope to continue collaborations with connections through this project on events such as Community Conversations and awarded community advocate Merle Wiley with our Dementia Friendly Community Champion Award at our Annual General Meeting earlier this June.

The creation of a dementia friendly communities knowledge hub is currently underway, with the goal of having a site up in later in 2024. This website is intended to be an engagement tool for communities to find dementia friendly resources and ideas to make their communities more accessible, inclusive, and welcoming.

We will continue supporting the relationships built during the project and using the resources and knowledge we gained during this project to support other communities in Saskatchewan. We have already been continuing our engagement of First Nations Communities and libraries throughout the province through outreach with resources, presentations, and attending community events- and only see this engagement growing with the growth of our resources.

To learn more about the actions you can take to support us in building a Dementia Friendly Saskatchewan, we invite you to view our recently completed guide: Building Dementia Friendly Communities