Dementia Care Social Club: Where hard topics get soft landings

**Bringing Community Back Together | S2E3 | Dr Katya Numbers & Monique Pockran |Co founders Dementia Care Social Club** "I haven’t had to be myself for the past two years, I didn’t know that before I came here" .Dementia Care Social Club attendee What if dementia care wasn’t only about services, appointments and managing a diagnosis, butabout how we continue to include people in our families, friendships, neighbourhoods and communities? In this episode, Samantha Heron sits down with **Dr Katya Numbers**, researcher and educator at UNSW’s Centre for Healthy Brain Ageing (CHeBA), and **Monique Pockran**, dementia doula and founder of Dahlia Dementia Guidance & Support. All 3 work in some capacity with people living with Dementia, *and* it has also touched all of their personal lives. Together, Katya and Monique are the co-founders of the **Dementia Social Club**  a growing community bringing people living with dementia, carers, families, researchers, professionals and interested community members together to learn, connect and feel less alone. It is a place where, as they beautifully describe it, **hard topics get soft landings.** This conversation explores dementia well beyond a diagnosis: - **Katya** shares how her professional workin  memory and ageing became deeplypersonal when her own father began showing signs of dementia,  and why those signs don’t always look like thememory loss we typically associate with the condition. <!--THE END--> - **Monique** reflects on her father’s journeywith Alzheimer’s disease and how her experiences as both a daughter and dementia professional shaped her determination to help families navigate whatcomes after diagnosis. <!--THE END--> - We exploreyounger onset dementia and why changes in behaviour, personality, spatialawareness or processing can sometimes be missed — particularly when dementiasimply isn’t on the radar. <!--THE END--> - We unpack the difference between dementia and Alzheimer’s disease and why understanding themany different forms of dementia matters. <!--THE END--> - We talk openly about the enormous gap that can exist after diagnosis: a family’s world has just changed, yet they may be sent home with information, referralsand a follow-up appointment months away, left trying to work out what comesnext. And then we talk about **connection**. A visitor described returning month after month because the community made her feel **“seen and heard and full.”** This is perhaps where the Dementia Care Social Club offers us a glimpse of something much bigger. Around the same table might be someone living with dementia, a daughter caring for a parent, a former carer, a researcher, a clinician or someone who simply wants to understand more, and you may have no idea who is who. Because, as Katyasays, **“everybody in that room is the expert in a sense.”** Their vision is for Dementia Care Social Clubs to grow beyond a single venue or two people hosting events into communities across Australia where people have the confidence andknowledge to talk openly about dementia and continue including people living with dementia in ordinary community life. This conversation feels very much at the heart of **Bringing Community Back Together**. **Learn more about Katya, Monique and the Dementia Care Social Club:** Dementia Care Social Club Dahlia DementiaGuidance & Support (Monique ) Katya Numbers UNSW **Brain & Dementia information, support and free learning resources:** UNSW Centre forHealthy Brain Ageing (CHeBA) — resourceshttps://www.unsw.edu.au/cheba/about-us/resources Dementia Australiahttps://www.dementia.org.au/ Wicking DementiaResearch and Education Centre, University of Tasmania — free online dementia courses including Understanding Dementia https://www.utas.edu.au/wicking/study **Connection Movements** https://aiip.net.au/ https://goodflock.org/ Connect with host Samantha Heron