A GROUP attempting to make Horwich “dementia friendly” has been awarded £10,000 from the National Lottery.

Horwich Dementia was formed by town councillors Steven Chadwick, Marie Brady, Kevin McKeown, Richard Silvester and Bridie Tonge, around a year ago in an effort to tackle the illness locally.

And the group has announced the windfall grant, which they say will go towards helping people in the community.

Cllr Chadwick said: “We got together and developed this bid, which has been successful, getting a £10,000 grant from the lottery. The whole idea of this is to use it to raise awareness of dementia in the community.

“It’s all about making Horwich dementia friendly.”

One of the things the groups is looking at is to support people is by providing free Guardian Angels.

The devices, made by Connect Tech, come in the form of a wristband, keyring, zipper tag and badge and allow members of the public to use their phones in a contactless method to scan the device.

The ‘Tap Your Phone To Get Them Home’ method gives the name and an emergency contact number of the person who is in need. Cllr Chadwick said: “There are quite a few things we want to be doing. It’s quite an exciting project.

“We started having regular meetings with other organisations. The Guardian Angels would be free to anybody who has got dementia in the Horwich area.”

“We are absolutely delighted with the grant, it’s money that’s going to be spend in Horwich and it will be for the community. There are a lot of elderly residents in the area and obviously everybody will know someone who has been affected by dementia.

“This is just about raising the awareness. You never know who might be affected whether it’s yourself or a family member.”

The group will be announcing a date of its official launch in the near future.