Dementia Champion given fellowship honour

Tracy Paine, deputy chief executive of care village operator Belong, has been honoured with the prestigious Churchill Medallion at an awards ceremony in London.

Tracy received the award from the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust following completion of her travelling fellowship, during which she research models of overseas care.

“It’s a tremendous honour to receive the Churchill Medallion, particularly at a time when our organisation is receiving praise for work in the field of dementia care,” Tracy said.

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“Belong is a leading provider in top-class dementia care in England, and it is crucial for us to keep evaluating and innovating the services and nature of care and support that we provide.

“I set out with the intention of seeing how some of the world’s leading providers approach the built environment and I was delighted to find that we are already pioneering some of the best practice here in the UK.

For her fellowship, Tracy travelled to Australia and the US for five weeks, where she had the opportunity to investigate the design environments of some of the world’s leading dementia care providers, to see if any of the practices in those countries could be introduced successfully into the Belong operation; already recognised as one of the leading organisations of its kind in the UK.

Tracy had the opportunity to examine a number of the original households in Australia that inspired Belong’s UK model of care and was also invited to be a guest panellist at the International Dementia Conference in Sydney.  The award caps a busy two year period, during which Belong has opened new villages in England, with several more in the pipeline.