People suffering from dementia can be affected by certain construction activities. Some sufferers will see a blacktop patch in a footpath as a deep hole, and become frightened, and others, on finding their regular pedestrian route suddenly blocked, become agitated. Site staff and operatives have received training in how to become dementia friends, enabling them to identify members of the public who may be suffering from dementia, and in how to help them safely navigate their way through or around footpath and highway improvement works. Also, what practical changes a site team could make to their site layout to make it less of a challenge to dementia sufferers by providing colourful cross hatching to temporary blacktop patches, for example.
Site teams are already familiar with the measures that have to be put in place to ensure that footpath and highway improvement works can be safely navigated by people with physical disabilities or who are visually impaired, but not those suffering from dementia. The dementia awareness training, developed and delivered inhouse by the company’s dementia friends champion, has raised awareness of the problems that footpath and highway improvement works can present to dementia sufferers and has helped them come up with practical solutions.
The training resources were provided by the Alzheimer’s Society Dementia Friends initiative. The Alzheimer’s Society also helped the company develop a dementia friend hard hat sticker. A dementia sufferer, on seeing the sticker, would have the confidence to ask for help, knowing that the person they were talking to understood their condition.
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