The snooker group where most members have dementia
BBCWhen you go to a meeting of this snooker group, there is the usual hush, the click of ball hitting ball, chalking of cues - but in this case, most members have been diagnosed with dementia.
"We come here and we enjoy ourselves," Ian Carter says, the man who founded No Teir Snooker, to help those who discovered they have the condition.
"We have different levels of abilities some players play what they see so go to a red on a red, but they are hitting the ball and it's going in," he said.
Carter set up the group as he said he felt there was a gap in support for those in the early stages of dementia.
"When you get diagnosed it explains those past couple of years of your life, to a point it's quite as relief but then you are left with a void," he added.
He wanted others in the area around Congleton, Cheshire, to be able to get together and socialise over a game of snooker in "a bit of normality".
They play at the town's snooker club every Wednesday for two hours to enjoy the sport and catch up.
"The stigma [of dementia] forces you down the road of being isolated," Carter said.
"When you are in a clinical environment you can't go to the bar and have a pint or go on the balcony to have a cigarette it's too controlled.
"For a couple of hours [here], you can just be yourself and just have a laugh."
Denise Parr, a dementia outreach nurse for the Cheshire and Wirral NHS Trust, helped set up the group with Carter after noticing similar gaps in the care system.
"Services for early on set dementia are really few and far between, there really isn't a lot available," she said.
The nurse said the group was "a breath of fresh air" for those with early onset dementia as, in her experience, she had noticed people could often shy away from talking about their diagnosis.
She said the group was giving people with dementia some of their social life back.
"You're still part of society, you're not boxed off, it's not there's a group for dementia - it's a snooker club and you're mixing with everyone else as well," Parr smiled.
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