As part of the Going to Stay at Home training program, carers and people with dementia living at home will learn coping and nursing skills and develop a support network to allow people to live at home longer.

The residential course runs at Tamworth’s Quest Apartments from tomorrow through until nextFriday night or Saturday morning.

Dementia is becoming more of an issue as the population ages, with one person diagnosed every six minutes.

There were 257,275 people living with dementia in 2010, in 2030 it is estimated there will be 591,531 people and in 2050 the number is expected to jump to 1,130,691 people.

HammondCare dementia consultant Sophie Bailey said the residential 

training course aimed to encourage people to access services more readily, so the person with dementia could stay at home longer. 

“The thing about caring is, it isn’t usually planned for and it just happens,” she said.

“The carer usually doesn’t have any skills, they just learn to cope with things.”

Ms Bailey said dementia was a complex disease, requiring specialist knowledge to care for the person with the disease, well.

“People often don’t get diagnosed with the disease early on, so it can’t be treated in its early stages. In regional areas, access to services is poor,” she said.

Ms Bailey said they wanted to stop people ending up in residential care facilities before they had to, which was usually due to stress.

“Home is where we all want to be,” she said.

Carers involved in the program stay at Quest Apartments for a week for free and hear from a range of speakers from different support services and the person with dementia is in day respite while their carer is at the conference. 

There are still limited places available, which can be booked on 0406 429 640.