A group of 11 students in Years 10 and 11, part of our Senior School, visited the Riverlee Residential and Nursing Home in Greenwich to learn more about living with dementia. The students were keen to become ‘Dementia Friends’, an Alzheimer’s Society initiative aiming to change the way people think, act and talk about dementia.

The group learned that dementia is not a natural part of ageing, but is caused by diseases of the brain and that there are a number of different types of dementia – of which Alzheimer’s is only one. More importantly, they discovered that it is possible to live well with dementia. People don’t ‘suffer’ with or from dementia; they live with dementia. Each of the students has committed to a personal action to become a Dementia Friend and Blackheath High School is now a Dementia Friendly School.