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How our walking group went 'virtual' for people living with dementia
With nature as the theme for this year’s Mental Health Awareness Week, Ghazal Mazloumi talks about her work with Trent Dementia, connecting people with dementia to nature and the outdoors.
With evidence emerging to suggest physical activity may help with cognition in dementia, we were inspired by the Country Walking Magazine #walk1000miles campaign. In 2019, we decided to introduce the idea of walking groups to our community of people living with dementia, and their families.
I spoke to local organisations like Age UK's Best Foot Forward project in Nottingham, Notts Guided Walks, and the Ramblers Association, to see how we could work together to help people living with dementia and their families form walking groups in the local area.
Following some training with the Ramblers’ I was able to lead walks myself. Suzanne, our project worker, helped secure a donation of 100 step counters from Virgin Pulse, which we could give to our community and help them monitor their walking progress.
We promoted our project on social media, beginning with a short walk around a local park. We sent out Virgin Pulse step counters and offered to record steps on behalf of our walkers, which we log with the #walk1000miles website.
Sadly, within a few weeks we went into lockdown and many people began shielding. We decided to continue supporting our members with a weekly online meeting. In particular, we encouraged people to share pictures and videos of their walks outdoors, which we set to music to create ‘virtual walks’. Local TV station, NottsTV ran a feature on the initiative, which you can view here.
The virtual walks group is open to anyone who fancies a walk and would like to share their experiences amongst nature.
The form to register steps is still active and we have step counters available for local people living with dementia who’d like to join in. The Trent Dementia team are happy to help people set their nature pictures to music and video.
We are definitely going to restart our walking groups once the relaxing of restrictions allows and we’ve have secured funds for transportation to make the group accessible.
Trent Dementia is an East Midlands based charity, hosted by the Institute of Mental Health. Find out more about our walking groups here.
Email: [email protected] or call 0115 74 84220. This service is free.
Originally published on the Institute of Mental Health blog.
Ghazal Mazloumi
Project Developer
Trent Dementia
Ghazal is a Project Development Worker and administrator officer for Trent Dementia charity at the Institute of Mental Health in Nottingham. She has an MA in Counselling, MSc in Substance Misuse and BA in General Psychology. Ghazal is a graduate member of British Psychological Society. She has been working in the mental health sector since 2016. Ghazal's role in the Trent Dementia Empowerment Program is to support people living with and affected by dementia to establish peer support and advisory groups and activities across the East Midlands, and to organise events. She writes about her experience on the Trent Dementia charity blog. She is now facilitating a free monthly walking group for people living with dementia and their supporters at Highfields Park. Ghazal is starting another free walking group for people affected by dementia at Stonebridge City Farm in Nottingham.
