Keeping Meeting Centres going long term - Recommendations for people running Meeting Centres

Meeting Centres are places for people to socialise, get involved in activities and access information to help to meet their needs. They are a form of community-led support for people living with dementia and those that support them.

It can be challenging for Meeting Centres to keep going long term, so we carried out a 2-year research project called Get Real with Meeting Centres, funded by The National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR). This project looked at how Meeting Centres can run both sustainably and successfully, and the issues they face in doing this.

We have a spoken to a wide range of people involved with Meeting Centres in England and Wales. They have helped us find out how things work and what the challenges are. In this booklet we talk about what we have learnt.