“The thing I can’t believe is my mum’s speech was virtually gone, but since the classes she’s started saying words, she’s maybe babbling, but in the context of that she’s structuring sentences. What’s helped is that she’s obviously aware that she’s part of something, when Linda will ask certain things, my Mum’s actually responded back, in context, about what they’re taking about!”

“My Mum was a great reader, she loved reading, and when she was diagnosed with dementia the reading kind of went away. We’d buy her magazines every week to encourage her, and to keep the reading going. But her dementia progressed and she moved to a home she just wouldn’t bother, she wasn’t interested in the magazines. But since going to the classes, she’s actually been picking up the magazine, and sitting, as she would have done at home, with the magazine on her knee, flicking through it. It’s amazing, it really is."

"The camaraderie of the class totally makes dementia disappear, as in dementia is not the focus, it’s in the background. And that’s important, because as a society we have really got to get to grips with what dementia really is. With [dementia] you really have to keep going, you have to keep fighting, because you don’t lose the sense of that person, the person is still there, you just have to find ways to re-engage and change your relationship with that person as the dementia goes on. But that’s still my mum, I can still see my mum in there. When you have lived with dementia from the beginning, all the way through, and when you love someone so much, there’s still that ability to see past dementia."