ADVISORS

Nicky Cave
Nicky is the founder and Managing Director of Eldercare but still plays a very active role in advising people about their options for meeting residential or domiciliary care costs if they are not eligible for Local Authority support. The business was set up after Nicky had personal experience of her grandparents going through the care system yet getting no advice at all about their funding options.

The team at Eldercare offer independent, specialist financial advice to families and residents worried about how they are going to pay for care. They also offer a bespoke service to help families who are thinking about whether to rent a property out or sell it to fund care costs. This ‘assisted move’ service has helped many families who would have otherwise been overwhelmed by the challenge of selling the family home by themselves.

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Anne Clarke
Anne is the Director for Wales and Southern England for Skills for Health, a not for profit organisation that provides support to healthcare employers wanting to develop their staff, help them deliver high quality care, improve outcomes, raise standards in skills and training, and maximise the potential of their workforce.

Working in the health sector since 1996, Anne has undertaken a number of roles supporting organisational development; service planning; healthcare evaluation and accreditation; and quality improvement initiatives for both NHS and independent sector organisations. She has contributed to the research and development of service-specific good practice standards for the health sector and managed accreditation assessment processes for healthcare providers. 

Anne is passionate about improving the care and support provided for people living with dementia and their carers and families. She experienced the best and worst of dementia care with her own parents (her Mum had Alzheimer’s disease and her Dad had vascular dementia) and her personal struggle to ensure high quality compassionate care for her loved ones inspired her to take an active role in championing the cause of carers and people living with dementia. Since then Anne has been involved in numerous projects including providing dementia awareness training for healthcare staff; developing a new primary care dementia support role; producing a dementia awareness elearning programme; and the development of a dementia skills and knowledge framework for healthcare workers that aims to improve the quality and consistency of dementia training. 

Anne lives in Wiltshire, is Mum to a grown up son, daughter and elderly cat and enjoys reading, travelling, music festivals and Tottenham Hotspur FC. During 2013 she did a parachute jump to raise funds for Alzheimer’s research and in September 2015 is climbing Mount Kilimanjaro for charity.

Professor David Jolley
David is a retired Consultant Psychiatrist who learned first about new approaches to the care of older people with dementia and similar disorders as a medical student, spending time with the service created by Drs Russell Barton and Tony Whitehead in Essex. He later trained with Tom Arie, John Brocklehurst and Felix Post before establishing services in the North West and then the West Midlands. He is essentially a clinician committed to multi-disciplinary teamwork in liaison with other agencies but has always had links with university departments and the voluntary sector.

In retirement David is Honorary Reader in the Psychiatry of Late Life based with the PSSRU: The University of Manchester. Until recently he was Honorary Consultant at Willow Wood Hospice in Ashton under Lyne and contributed clinical sessions in memory services at Gnosall Health Centre and for Manchester Mental Health and Social Care Trust. The Gnosall and South Manchester pioneered an approach to take memory services into Primary Care. The Willow Wood service is about creating a safe framework for people with dementia as it progresses and they come close to death. Although no longer contributing clinical sessions, David remains involved with all three projects and teaches medical students at Wythenshawe Hospital. Involvement with the PSSRU facilitates research, publication and communication of ideas in print and in conferences: recent publications consider primary care, ethnicity issues, end of life in dementia, spirituality, work patterns and stress, hospice and hospital, support of people in care homes, the effects of relocation – enforced and otherwise, person-centred care and integration of services, analysis of services for people with dementia in Europe, a number of unusual syndromes.

The philosophy of Pathfinders – helping people find their way through the complex or simple world they live - in feels right. This is counter to the dominant alternative presumption that people are directed into preordained, single-issue, common pathways. Since March this year he has developed monthly Dementia Conversations with Reverend Ros Watson at Bowdon Vale Methodist Church – this is proving to be a worthwhile activity in which we are supporting each other and learning and shaping what we do.

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Aisling Kearney
Aisling is an accomplished communications professional, respected for her expertise in the social care, healthcare, charity and commercial sectors. 

She devised and managed the creation of two childrens’ books: ‘Visiting Gran’s new home' and ‘Visiting Grandad’s new home’, written by Virginia Ironside, well-known writer and journalist at The Independent newspaper. The hugely successful books are designed to help children understand their grandparents' dementia. It is the second time Aisling has collaborated with Virginia as the pair also created booklets to help explain Parkinson’s disease to children.
Aisling has an MBA from London Business School.

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Jacquie Mutter

Jacquie is currently Chief Executive at OCN London where she started as a Unit Development Officer in 1995, with a remit to advise practitioners in a broad range of contexts in the development and accreditation of unitised courses. Prior to joining the OCN, she worked in further education and previous to that, at the British Council in Caracas. She has a Post Graduate Certificate in Education for Adults and a Masters in Adult and Continuing Education from the Institute of Education. During the 20 years at OCN, Jacquie has contributed to national strategic and policy developments in a range of areas, led the development of national qualifications and compiled guidance on how to write credit-based qualifications. She has written units for courses in dementia awareness and care, participated in the national review of the national dementia care qualifications and was a member of the fordementia/Dementia UK Advisory Board for several years.

 

Keith Oliver

Although born, raised and educated in the north, Keith has lived happily in the Canterbury area since 1981. He is married with three grown up children and three grandchildren. For 33 years Keith worked as a teacher and a head teacher in a number of primary schools. He also served a two year secondment to Kent County Council as Canterbury’s Primary Schools’ Advisor.

On New Year’s Eve 2010 Keith’s life changed dramatically when a suspected diagnosis of dementia, in his case Alzheimer’s disease, was confirmed. Between January – April 2011 Keith came to terms with the diagnosis and was determined to fill the vacuum created in his life by having to take early retirement at 55. He decided that as ”one door closes another will open” and that he would use his energy, drive and remaining skills to make a contribution towards public awareness around dementia. Since May 2011 Keith has developed a unique role within the dementia world of being a Dementia Service User Envoy, and has become an important volunteer within the Kent & Medway NHS Partnership Trust.

 

He has spoken at many conferences to a wide range of audiences. He presented at the Alzheimer’s Disease International conference in March 2012 and at the UK Dementia Congress in November 2012, and has been called upon to support training for care home staff and Kent County Council library, museum, art gallery and Gateway staff. Keith’s skills and experience results in a full diary. He is an active and committed member of the Dementia Action Alliance, and represents Dementia UK on the steering committee for VALID (Valuing Active Life in Dementia) which is jointly run by University College London and NE London NHS Trust. He has completed a number of projects on behalf of the Alzheimer’s Society and has helped to found and co-chair the flourishing KMPT Service User Network (“Kent Forget Me Nots”.)

His story has been covered in local and national newspapers, magazines and television, along with being used world-wide as a dementia training tool via a You Tube film entitled “Keith Oliver’s story”.

“Once a teacher, always a teacher” could easily be Keith’s catchphrase as he seeks to continue to contribute to public life.