Dementia charity purchases mini bus after funding success

A local Newcastle based dementia charity is celebrating purchasing its first mini-bus after being awarded a grant from the Big Lottery Fund.

Silverline Memories, a charity which provides support to those living with dementia in Newcastle and Gateshead, is now set to offer more day trips for its service users thanks to the funding.

The charity, which is operated by volunteers, runs two Silverline Memories specialist dementia cafes in Newcastle Great Park and Brunton Park. The charity provides 20 social opportunities a month, including weekly support group and counselling for carers, two tea dances a month and day trips and visits to places of local interest. All volunteers for the charity have personal or professional experience of caring for someone with Dementia.

Sandra, who set up the charity in 2013 said, “The funding from the Big Lottery Fund was fantastic for us. We are now able to take our service users to their favourite places or to places of significance to them. Familiar places can be therapeutic to those suffering from the symptoms of dementia, so we are looking forward to taking people to those locations and seeing the positive impact it has on them.

“We would also like to thank James Hill from BH Financial. He helped us to source the mini bus quickly and found us a fantastic deal to best utilise our funding. This support was invaluable – we couldn’t have sourced the bus for such a reasonable price without his assistance.”

For more information on BH Financial please visit http://www.bhfinancialservices.co.uk/ or call 0191 2602000.