Neighbourhood Return Project

Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust have been working with Neighbourhood Watch on an innovative project designed to help locate missing people with dementia quickly to ensure their safety as well ... Read more

Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust have been working with Neighbourhood Watch on an innovative project designed to help locate missing people with dementia quickly to ensure their safety as well as reducing their anxiety and that of their families.

Older people with dementia are at particular risk of getting lost from wandering away from home. The main responsibility for finding them usually rests with their family, who will often ask the police for support.

The Neighbourhood Return Project involves recruiting volunteers who, if they receive a message to say that a person with dementia is lost in their immediate neighbourhood, will go out and help look for them. Family members are encouraged to register details which might help volunteers such as a photograph, description and likely places to look.

The Neighbourhood and Home Watch Network (England and Wales) has been awarded £191,848 by the BIG Lottery Silver Dreams Fund for a 15 month project to develop a pilot network in North Oxfordshire and Northamptonshire, with the aim of it being live by Autumn 2012. If the pilot is successful then further funding will be sought for a national rollout. The project was one of 37 organisations which were awarded funds from a total of 1,401 applications.

A “test scenario” was run in Deddington last week in which a local volunteer pretended to be lost and they were successfully found by 12 members of the local community.

The project ended after 15 months.

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Published: 25 June 2012