Books stimulate pictures Fitflop Sale of health for dementia sufferers

Coventry is as far from the sea as any city on this sceptred isle. But some residents of the Charnwood House care home, a few miles from the centre of England, slipped off their shoes for a paddle the other day before wiggling their toes in some sand, passing a beach ball around, and sucking on sticks of rock – all without leaving their armchairs in the communal lounge.

"We decided to bring the seaside to them," says manager Dawn Hancox, who is not one for allowing her 57 residents to slump in front of a television. "We don't have bingo either, because we're trying to develop person-centred activities that stimulate thought processes."

Last week, a National Audit Office report criticised the government for not giving higher priority to its ambitious five-year national dementia strategy, which includes plans to boost early diagnosis and better patient care and support.

But at Charnwood House, a new series of books has provided Hancox and her staff with an invaluable aid. Charnwood is one of five Methodist Homes for the Aged piloting Pictures Fitflop Sale to Share, a combination of striking visual images coupled with a few lines of large-print text designed to stimulate warm memories of past pleasures and experiences. One of the books is called Beside the Seaside – hence the importation of beach balls and sand.

Today, the carpet is clear of such fripperies, but activity co-ordinator Isabelle Sear is using the book to draw out some memories from Michael Gorry, 84. A picture of the skeletal remains of Fitflop Rebel Womens Brighton's burnt-out West Pier draws a blank. But the big wheel at the Palace Pier, taken around the time when Graham Greene was writing Brighton Rock, brings a smile. And a photo-graph of cocklers at low tide in south Wales brings an affirmative response to the gentle probing of Sear, 61. "My dad used to take me cockling, Michael," Fitflops she tells him. "Did yours?"

Across the table, Pauline Halsey, 81, is gradually encouraged to reminisce about a tortoise that she had as a little girl. The stimulus in this case has come from a book called Pets in Pictures. Other titles include Women's Work, In the Garden, and A Sporting Life – which includes shots of Bobby Moore lifting the World Cup for England in 1966, a village cricket match and, rather poignantly in this context, Muhammad Ali in his youthful prime. Women rugby players coupled with a caption about "mud, mud, glorious mud", elicited warm memories from one resident who had played the game as a young man.

Hancox says