BLAENAVON is taking steps towards becoming one of south Wales’s first dementia supportive communities after the town council took part in a training session to become dementia friends.

Already boasting Wales’s first dementia friendly post office, and with many residents having received training to become ‘dementia friends’, local councillors are confident the town has the ability to achieve the status within a year.

Blaenavon Town Council has followed the lead of Big Pit National Coal Museum which has been using the dementia friends initiative to raise awareness of the condition in the community – by taking part in training and urging businesses, other organisations and individuals to do the same.

Big Pit’s learning manager Sharon Ford has spent the past two years leading Amgueddfa Cymru – National Museum Wales’s drive to help people live well with dementia.

This has included the development of a dementia friendly underground at Big Pit and awareness sessions for employees working with people with dementia, those who have experience of the disease and others who simply want to understand it better.

Ms Ford attended a meeting of the council and said Blaenavon had the advantage of being a friendly and close-knit community, which could help it become dementia friendly more easily than larger towns.

It would be a big support for residents with experience of family and friends affected by dementia.

She said that if enough businesses and other organisations in the town took the initiative on board, Blaenavon could ultimately become an accredited Dementia Supportive Community.

Following an awareness training session, all town councillors were presented with dementia friends badges and the council is now on its way to becoming accredited as dementia friendly.

The Mayor of Blaenavon, Cllr Phyllis Roberts, said: “Every one of us has - or will ultimately have - experience of Dementia, whether through our family members, friends or neighbours.”

“Thanks to Sharon’s training session, we have received valuable information on how to be dementia-supportive and have a much greater appreciation of the many complicated aspects of the condition.”