Management at Fields of Sidmouth have teamed up with a local care provider to provide specialist dementia awareness training for its entire customer facing staff.

The move is part of a campaign backed by the Herald and Chamber of Commerce to help make the town more ‘dementia friendly’.

More than 700 people in the Sid Valley live with dementia, and many people with short term memory loss require extra time and assistance with shopping tasks and making payments.

Mark McGlade, director of care provider Home Instead, said: “Dementia can affect not only short term memory but also language, understanding and mental agility.

“And helping customer facing staff to be able to recognise the signs of dementia and empathise with the difficulties someone may be having is an important and key element of making our communities more dementia aware.”