The unique vehicle gave visitors to Palmers Green Festival a taste of the impact dementia can have, explains Alexandra Sacker from Home Instead Enfield

Visitors to The Virtual Dementia Tour at Palmers Green Festival

On a hot and sunny Sunday in Broomfield Park, Home Instead Enfield brought the ‘Dementia Experience Bus’ to Palmers Green Festival.

The response was fantastic and around 50 people managed to experience what it may be like living with the condition during a ten-minute ‘tour’ on the bus, guided by an experienced trainer and supported by the team at local home care provider Home Instead Enfield.

This was an immersive experience involving sound, vision, lights and touch. Groups were kitted out with vision-impaired goggles, headphones displaying background noise, an insert in shoes to simulate pins and needles, and thick gloves to demonstrate difficulties in picking up objects and feeling texture, as well as taking instructions over the background noise.

Festival goers who took part were blown away by what they experienced and labelled it extremely insightful, impactful, as well as emotional.

Home Instead Enfield is a member of the Enfield Dementia Network, a consortium working tirelessly to make Enfield more dementia friendly. Helping people understand what it means to have dementia, by experiencing some of the symptoms, will help make our society more understanding.

For more information on how to arrange help at home call Home Instead on 0203 6418870.

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