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I feel very honoured to have been awarded an Alzheimer’s Society knowledge exchange fellowship. With this funding I will be working with colleagues in Netherlands to share expertise about dementia care in the community. Just as importantly, I will be working with stakeholder in East Midlands and across UK to listen to their views and experiences and sharing our ‘academic’ knowledge in ways that can bring benefits to people with dementia and carers.

This project is a collaboration with Dr Marjolein van der Marck, Radboud university medical center at Nijmegen, and funding is from Alzheimer Nederland as well as Alzheimer’s Society in UK. We are pleased to have the support of our supervisors; Prof John Gladman and Prof Tom Dening at University of Nottingham, and Prof Marcel Olde-Rikkert, Dr René Melis and Dr Jenneken Naaldenberg at Radboud umc. We are also working with academic colleagues such as Dr Maud Graff and Dr Fiona Marshall.

Within the project we will share expertise between the two academic centres. Our work has been about understanding needs of individuals and coordinating local community based services to meet these needs. We know this does happen sometimes, and at later stages of dementia, but at earlier stages, we are hearing it can be sporadic and often disjointed. We are also interested in Dementia Friendly Communities and we will investigate whether these initiatives may improve access to support.

We will consult with many stakeholders in community services in both East Midlands, UK and Gelderland, Netherlands. We will also interview people with dementia and their carers. We would love to hear your views or comments on this project. We will also be holding seminars and web-based seminars to share our findings. Please email me [email protected] or share your views on twitter @nchadborn