It was a pleasure to speak at the Alzheimer’s Society Volunteer Engagement Network Day at Lancing Manor last week and meet many of the fantastic local volunteers who give so much of their time for this excellent charity. Dementia is a problem that affects 850,000 people in the UK and that number is forecast to exceed 1.1m by 2025. The south-east with an estimated 121,000 sufferers is the region with the most sufferers and in financial terms it costs society as a whole £26bn a year let alone the social and personal cost.
The Government ‘Dementia Plan’ announced in March has gone a long way to extend early checks, provide personalised care plans, rate quality of care as standard and crucially invest more in research but a cure is still some way off and until then we must continue to rely on the support f this army of volunteer carers.
I attended a meeting at the Shoreham Centre last week convened by the County Council to try to find a solution to the damage to the Adur Ferry Bridge which has been looking scruffy since the mass vandalism of 13 of the glass panels last November. Since then fortunately further damage has been limited until some clowns have now decided to apply graffiti to some of the panels and posts. No sooner had a team from West Sussex cleaned it up on Friday and removed the blue plastic film designed to avoid children injuring themselves on any sharp edges than a further graffiti spree hit the bridge over the weekend, this time in red paint.
We agreed at the meeting to look urgently at much more sophisticated CCTV and new signage and it is vital that when residents get wind of any damage it is reported to police as a crime straight away. There was strong agreement amongst the councillors, council officers, police and others present and it is vital we crack down on this mindless vandalism before it wrecks this iconic Shoreham structure for everyone.
Shoreham and Lancing were packed on a hot Sunday for the beginning of the Adur Festival, some excellent venues on the Adur Art Trail and the ever popular Shoreham Fort Family History weekend run by Gary Baines and his excellent band of Friends of Shoreham Fort volunteers. After taking in all of these I ended up at the 25th Blessing of the Boats Ceremony on Lancing Beach Green when amusingly there was a technical hitch after St Michael’s vicar Father Barry forgot to bring the Bible for the readings. He ad-libbed in his usual inimitable style and will be greatly missed when he retires to Bexhill next month.