IT provides a sanctuary of support.

For families facing the devastation of dementia it is a place where they can reminisce and share experiences with others in similar situations.

Launched in 2013, The Idle Memory Club, is an extension of the work Elizabeth Anderson had been doing as an academic around dementia issues.

Elizabeth explains much of the work focused on educating care staff around the principles of person-centred care, and also about being responsive to a person with dementia and understanding their needs.

Through her work, Elizabeth discovered the need to connect with communities and launched The Memory Club in 2013.

The aim was to provide a place where people with dementia and their carers could go and meet others in similar circumstances and share experiences. For those with dementia there is the opportunity to reminisce and, for their carers, the chance to talk and access support.

Testimony to its success, the Memory Club has expanded its sessions. It meets in the Kirkgate Centre, Shipley and also runs sessions in Keighley, Low Moor and Idle.

As well as receiving an Awards for All grant to provide a lunch at the Idle session, the club has also received support from organisations including the Rotary Club of Greengates and Idle and Sovereign Health.

Elizabeth, who set up the community interest company - The Memory Tree - to enable her to apply for funding to continue running the groups, expresses their importance to those who benefit. "They meet somebody else who is going through the same thing."

She says meeting the volunteers, who are all local too, provides 'another layer of people who know about their situation and care about their situation,' says Elizabeth.

"It becomes a mini family where people are looking out for each other."

Elizabeth explains that some carers, whose loved ones have since gone into a home, continue coming to the groups to keep in touch with the friends they have made, and many have become volunteers.

One family who has benefitted greatly from the Memory Club sessions are Marie and Jeffery Simmonite.

Marie started with Alzheimer's three years ago and the couple, from Idle, have been attending the group for two years.

Their daughter, Andrea Buskin and her husband Paul regularly make the trip from their home near York to attend the sessions.

Andrea explains attending the sessions helps her father to have some respite. "It is a really lovely relaxed atmosphere. The people who run it are really accommodating, they all have a background in care work and they are really welcoming.

"You just feel really comfortable there and you meet other people with the same problems. We have learnt such a lot about the condition."

Andrea says the reminiscing sessions are particularly enjoyable. "It's a memory jogger. Last week they did old fashioned sweets with old fashioned money and they had to remember what sweets they had in their childhood, strawberry laces and liquorice."

May Day memories such as decorating bikes with crepe paper was another interesting session Andrea recalled.

She says the sessions are 'invaluable' to those with Alzheimers or dementia and their family. "It is really invaluable because it is something we can rely on doing once a fortnight. They like a routine and they feel disorientated in a strange place with strange people, but it's almost like a friendship group that meets up on a regular basis."

Andrea says attending the sessions is something her Mum loves to do. "And we are in and amongst people who understand the condition," she adds.

The Idle Memory Club meets from 10.30am until 1.30pm on the second and fourth Tuesday of the month at Idle Baptist Church.

For more information call 01274 583364 or email elizabeth@thememorytree.org.uk