Memories can be just priceless, say East Lancashire carers (From Lancashire Telegraph)

Memories can be just priceless, say East Lancashire carers

7:00pm Thursday 25th October 2012 in News By Catherine Pye, Health reporter

TWO East Lancashire care homes are helping their local communities focus on capturing memories for later life.

Staff and residents at Dove Court, Shuttleworth Street, Burnley, and Old Gates Nursing Home in Livesey Branch Road, Blackburn, will be taking part in Memory Share Week from November 12 to 18 using the Bupa Map of Life Tool.

The website can be used to record significant experiences, such as schooldays, jobs, holidays, interests and friends, and provides ideas for families on how to unlock memories.

It also provides a record which can be passed on to future generations interested in their family history.

Siobhan Drane, Bupa Care Homes’ community and partnerships manager, said: “We’d like to encourage everyone, young and old, to capture their memories.

“Especially in later life, reminiscence can provide people with a great deal of enjoyment and improve their wellbeing by making them feel good about themselves and their life experiences.

“If families find out now about the important milestones in their parents’ lives, it will help them to encourage reminiscence in later years.”

Memory Share week has been organised after a national survey revealed that most people do not know enough about the important events in their parents’ early lives and what mattered most to them.

Although 64 per cent said they were able to name where their parents first met, only 33 per cent knew their father’s greatest achievement or the most memorable event in their mother’s childhood.

Less than 22 per cent could name their father’s best friend at school and only 35 per cent had ever spoken to their mother about relationships she’d had before their father came along.

Memory Share week is supported by Age Exchange, a charity that specifically works with older people to improve their quality of life by valuing their reminiscences through dramas and documentaries.

Craig Muir, chief executive of Age Concern, said: “We know the value of reminiscence and sharing memories in bringing people together, getting them to understand and value each other more and generally make their lives better.”

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