Royal Victoria Hospital Meeting Centre

12/09/2025

🌟 The Clubbie at RVH – Weekly Round-Up! 🌟
�What a week it’s been at The Clubbie – full of changes, chats, sea shanties and community connection! 🎶💬

👥 We waved a warm goodbye to 6 of our lovely inpatient members as they were discharged – it's always bittersweet but also proud to be playing a part in their safe discharge home. Their absence has shifted the dynamic, but also opened new space to welcome more folks in.

✨ We now have 6 inpatient and 3 community spaces available on Fridays – with one new referral and another community enquiry already in the works! 📝

🗓️ Last week’s highlights included:
* 🎵 A brilliant Sea Shanty session with Jan Bee Brown from The Heart Meeting Centre in Newhaven!

* 👩‍⚕️ Jenny from Speech and Language Therapy joined us along with a medical student and library delivery – lots of learning and laughter 📚
* 🤝 Volunteers Inalegwu and Bazet spent meaningful time connecting with Bode, one of our new members – such heartwarming peer support ❤️
🙌 All 6 new volunteers are now PVG’d and cleared – a huge thank you to each of them! Training continues next week 💪

📌 Looking ahead:

* 🖼️ We’re thrilled to have the V&A visiting on 23 Sept – art and culture incoming!

* 💡 Planning continues and lots of positive conversations between Meeting Centre teams, ward staff and RVH Senior Management happening to make the centre even better for everyone.

🧡 As always, thank you to our amazing staff, volunteers, members, families and ward teams. Your support, smiles and stories are what make The Clubbie such a special place 💫

05/09/2025

One Month of The Clubbie — and What a Month It’s Been! 🌟

At Royal Victoria Hospital, our new Meeting Centre, The Clubbie is making a real difference for in-patients living with dementia.
In just our first month, we’ve welcomed 12 members and seen 76 attendances. Members are already coming regularly, helping to build genuine friendships and trust, both among members themselves and with the wonderful staff and volunteers who support them.

Members are becoming more confident, expressive, and engaged. They're making choices about what they want to do — and just as importantly, what they don’t. One member, who was visibly distressed in her early visits, has already had sessions where she was calm, smiling, and clearly at ease.

Feedback from NHS staff confirms what we’re seeing: this space is having a positive impact.
We’ve heard incredible comments like:
💬 “It’s such a cheerful place to come.”
💬 “I like meeting my friends here.”
💬 “We always get a laugh.”
💬 “I like the physical games — much better than sitting in the ward.”

Staff are noticing important changes too — including improved eating and drinking on days members attend.
From lively games and music to sharing memories and stories over old photographs, The Clubbie is fast becoming a place where our members can feel like themselves again — active, valued, and connected.

Congratulations on a tremendous start for everyone involved and especially to Centre Manager, Fiona Barrett and support practitioners, Pam and Janice! Here’s to many more months of laughter, dancing, and friendship at The Clubbie. 💛

30/08/2025

Your central point for information on the DVVA Social Inclusion services, and other groups and activities taking place across Dundee. Please see the videos and posts in the information section below for information about how to use the Padlet.

30/08/2025

What a heart-warming week it's been at The Clubbie. We've seen such wonderful progress, meaningful interactions, and lots of laughter.

💬 Family feedback has been incredibly touching — one relative shared how much brighter their loved one has seemed since joining the Clubbie. It’s a lovely reminder of how valuable these moments are for everyone involved.

🧠 We've noticed some beautiful changes in a few of our members who’ve now been coming regularly — less anxiety, more engagement, spontaneous smiles, and growing friendships. Members are now asking to do activities they enjoy, not just picking from what's on offer. That growing confidence means the world.

🎲 Activities this week have included:
Chocolate Krispie cake making (a hit!)
Balloon tennis 🏐
Chair yoga (with toe-tapping tunes 🎶)
Poetry readings 📖 (Pam Ayres got us giggling!)
Reminiscence boxes sparking joyful memories
Classic games like snakes and ladders and dominoes 🐍🎲

💬 One member surprised us with a thoughtful comment after quietly observing a discussion — a beautiful reminder that everyone engages in their own way and time. Another member even shared memories of their family football star, sparking lovely conversation and connection.

💪 We welcomed a few new faces this week and were so impressed by the peer support from longer-standing members. Watching someone who was once nervous now helping others settle in has been truly inspiring.

🎶 Music, laughter, and genuine moments of joy filled the space every day, from singing along to Elvis and Frank Sinatra, to thoughtful conversations over a cuppa.

We're so proud of the gentle, safe environment we're building together here at the Clubbie. Whether someone is joining in full swing or simply enjoying the atmosphere, every moment counts.

Here’s to more smiles, more stories, and more togetherness in the weeks ahead! 💛

09/08/2025

What a fabulous first week at “The Clubbie” as we opened to members for the first time.
Members joined us from Wards 6, 7 and 8 and we all enjoyed getting to know each other. Members enjoyed a fiercely competitive dominoes game, (we think we might need to introduce a league and maybe a ref!), taught Janice to play pool, enjoyed reminiscing about old Dundee and discovered that some of us went to the same school but not at the same time, remembered “duffers corner” and who duffed who ….. and rediscovered the joy of hairnets, mousetraps, bicycle clips and 60’s music…think you maybe had to be there!
On a less frivolous note, already we can see the benefit to members as one person who was quite distressed at the start of the session managed to remain and be engaged in the activities on offer through, support, reassurance and distraction by the team, returning to the ward much calmer. Ward Staff have fed back how much brighter members appear after coming to the meeting centre and for some it has improved their sleep, members have told us how much they have appreciated coming along this week and are looking forward to our next session.
Huge thanks as always to ward staff, to our wonderful volunteers Wendy and Sam and to Jennie K. SLT for helping us to make this week such a success.

21/07/2025

It’s a wrap!

The final open day on Friday saw yet another wonderful mix of visitors to The Clubbie, even more NHS Tayside staff keen to see the transformation of the old ward 1 day room into a vibrant and welcoming hub for inpatients living with dementia and families to find out how we can work together.

Over the three open days the Team welcomed over 70 patients, families, staff and other visitors, went through three huge cakes and countless biscuits, cups of tea, and coffee …and Janice and Pam were still smiling at the end of it. We had a ball and want to say a huge thank you to everyone who took the time to come along and make the open days such a success and we look forward to working with many of you in the months and years to come.

If you didn’t make it to an Open Day but would like to learn what happens at The Clubbie then please just contact Centre Manager, Fiona to arrange a visit - fiona@meetingcentres.scot

18/07/2025

The Clubbie Open Day – take 2 !

Another busy, buzzy and successful open day yesterday at the RVH Meeting Centre.

We had again a wonderful mix of NHS Tayside Staff, patients and families visiting us. Visitors from other Meeting centres and Dundee council teams all keen to find out how we can work together to best support people living with Dementia both in hospital and in the tricky transition from hospital to home as well as local people keen to find out how their volunteering skills can help us.

A special mention must go to Dr Suzanne Gray, Dementia Nurse Consultant, NHS Tayside, one of the major driving forces behind the RVH Meeting Centre and our constant support and to Sandra McLeod, Deputy Chief Executive of NHS Tayside, both of whom gave so generously of their time yesterday spending most of the afternoon with us!

Pop along today for our last Open Day from 1-3.30pm. We would love to chat to you

16/07/2025

What a fantastic turn out at our first Open Day yesterday! Over 30 folks came along to say Hello and welcome us. As our CEO, Graham Galloway among other said, “the room was fairly buzzing”!
Patients, families, funders and NHS staff joined us to learn more about what a Meeting Centre looks like, what it feels like and what goes on. Board games, puzzles, reminiscing about old Dundee and of course lots of tea, coffee, cake and conversation were enjoyed by everyone.

We discussed support and information sharing for unpaid carers and families and our specific session for unpaid Carers starting on 15 August, forthcoming cooking and gardening projects and very topically how to stay cool in the hot weather!

If you have a spare half hour why not pop along on either Thursday 17th or Friday 18th July between 1- 3pm and see for yourself how special meeting centres are…we would love to meet you!

With huge thanks again to all our funders NHS Tayside Charitable Foundation, Tayside Contracts and Dundee Common Good Fund for making this unique test of change at Royal Victoria Hospital, Dundee, possible.

12/07/2025

What a fantastic transformation of the space, all ready to welcome people along to Open Days at the new RVH Meeting Centre. A lot of hard work has went in to this by Centre Manager, Fiona and team to make this a welcoming space for new in-patient members living with dementia and their families to enjoy time together away from the ward. Different options to get involved with, different areas for comfortable conversations, talking points, snooker table, and there are already some activities planned into the diary on the notice board. We can’t wait to see how the members begin to shape this new Meeting Centre

11/07/2025

Happening next week! we cannot wait! So much care, attention to detail has went in to planning this and so much support from everyone involved, either in offers of help or hoping to work alongside the new Meeting Centre in The Royal Victoria Hospital. Please do let us know if you have time to pop along next week!

Looking forward to our forthcoming open days. See attached flyer and get in touch for more details

07/07/2025

We were recently gifted the use of an unused greenhouse and small garden area that is on the hospital grounds. We are delighted to share that with this we will work alongside Dr Fi Brown on a social therapeutic horticulture project, ‘Garden Hearts’ Fi will work with with the new in-patient members and families, as well as Centre Manager, Fiona Barrett, staff team and volunteers to renovate the greenhouse, co-develop a holistic programme of activities and gather the learning from the project to share with our other Meeting Centres across Scotland.

Fi has worked with people living with dementia and their carers at the Eric liddell Community and already understands the Meeting Centre model through the Liddell Lions MC. She has recently completed a Churchill Fellowship in Social and Therapeutic Horticulture. Through this, she studied pioneering nature-based rehabilitation models at Alnarp Rehabilitation Garden and Gröna Rehab in Sweden. She is now developing programmes inspired by these approaches - one that offers restorative support for people living with dementia and unpaid carers, drawing on nature's inherent calm to provide refuge, reduce stress, and build resilience.

We can’t wait to welcome Fi when we officially open on 22nd July!

30/06/2025

Looking forward to our forthcoming open days. See attached flyer and get in touch for more details