Barbara Hodkinson MBE, the founder and co-ordinator of the Butterfly Scheme has been in our Trust for the past two days delivering updates and training sessions.

After day one at CRH yesterday, she  was overwhelmed and already looking forward to today at HRI. She said: " The overwhelming memory of today’s sessions is of team members from a wide range of roles, all enthusiastically pulling together to support a reliable safety net for patients who need dementia care whilst in hospital. We’ve had so many superb contributions from team members today - real engagement throughout. Great leadership and a great team!"

She hailed CHFT and its leadership for being one of the scheme's earliest supporters back in 2011. She said: "The Trust was a front-runner in aspiring to excellence in dementia care at a time when it really wasn’t on many people’s radar – and that, of course, was rooted in strong and forward-thinking dementia care leadership within the Trust.

"The staff response at that time was superb and I’m now relishing the opportunity to deliver teaching to a whole range of newer team members, as well as refreshing the approach of those already delivering wonderful dementia care.”

Our Nurse Consultant for Older People, Barbara Schofield, said "We're immensly grateful and proud that Barbara has continued to support the Butterfly Scheme at CHFT since its implementation."

The Butterfly Scheme is an award-winning care approach that helps staff to support people with memory impairment, such as patients living with dementia or those who are acutely confused. The Butterfly Scheme is an ‘Opt-In’ care approach, enabling patients and carers to make the choice regarding their care.

The system also provides an excellent resource to facilitate training, and evaluate the knowledge and skill of ward teams. Clinical and non-clinical staff can be trained to deliver the principles of the Scheme’s REACH response, which acts as a reminder of the skills required when caring for, and communicating with people with memory impairment.

In recent years, there have been significant improvements at CHFT to support patients with Dementia and Delirium. For example: the introduction of the Prevention of Delirium (POD) Team, Engagement Support Workers, Enhanced Care Assistants, A Level Student Enrichment Placements, evidence-based care plans and policies, and numerous resources to support social engagement (Digital Reminiscence Therapy Screens, Twiddlemuffs, Engagement Trolleys etc).

Since the introduction of EPR, and following the implementation of POD, Dementia Leads organised a Re-Launch of the Butterfly Scheme aiming to consolidate and update staff knowledge and skill, and support the implementation of the ward-based Evaluation System.