Funding Your Holiday

Finance doesn’t have to be a barrier to you getting the break you need. With the right support, anything is possible.

We’re hearing from many families and carers that they need a break, now more than ever. It’s clear that our holidays are more than a luxury — they’re a necessity.

A Dementia Adventure holiday is an essential chance to temporarily lay down your responsibilities, relax, regain your energy, and bond with your loved one so that you can return to your life together feeling refreshed and positive.

But we know affording a holiday isn’t always easy.

Keep reading for information on how we can help you fund your holiday.

A couple enjoying their holiday

Dementia Adventure Holiday Prices

After making your payment (including your deposit), there will be no more additional charges. The price you pay includes accommodation; food; transport while on holiday; activities; around-the-clock support for the length of your trip; and all the individualised organisation and planning in the run-up!

Behind every holiday there is a crew of people hard at work to ensure your trip goes off smoothly and safely. From scouting and booking locations to the nitty-gritty of meal plans and health-and-safety checks, every step of your itinerary has been researched, every detail reviewed by a Dementia Adventure staff member.

Dementia Adventure is not a normal holiday provider, so our prices aren’t just about the literal cost of accommodation and food. A huge part of our value lies in the detailed organisation we put into each of our holidays, and the time it takes to understand how we can best support you. This all needs to be taken into account when we look at how much a holiday costs us to run.

Lowering the Cost of Our Holidays

This year, we’re responding to the cost of living crisis by continuing to subsidise our holidays by a minimum of 30%. These subsidised prices are the ones you’ll see when you check the listed price for our group holiday destinations, and are made possible using the donations we receive from our supporters.

As a charity, we also offer our holidays on a not-for-profit basis. The price you pay does not include any of the charity overheads or running costs; we meet those with the help of our funders. This enables us to reduce the price of all our supported holidays and make them more affordable than they otherwise would be.

We aim to deliver our breaks to as many people who need them as possible, regardless of their financial situation. But if our subsidised prices are still out of reach for you, we might be able to offer you further financial help, support you with finding additional funding, or both.

Helping You Find Additional Funding

There are many grants and charitable funds available providing financial assistance for people who need it, from local trusts to benevolent funds. We can help point you in the right direction when searching for funding you might be eligible for, as well as supporting you with any applications you decide to make toward the cost of your holiday.

Our practical Guide to Financial Assistance contains some starting points for your search and lists various organisations that you could consider making funding applications to. However, please do contact us if you’d like to speak to someone about this — we’ll do our best to help.

The Dementia Adventure Support Fund

Holiday maker and carer

Thanks to Our Supporters

CASE STUDY

More Than a Break – a Change of Mindset

Esther, her wife Angela, and their two children aged 5 and 9 went to the Isle of Wight for a week’s supported holiday, with financial assistance from the Dementia Adventure Support Fund.

Angela was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s in the frontal and temporal lobes in 2018; this variant of Alzheimer’s is characterised by disruption of the executive function, affecting judgement, understanding, and memory, as well as causing changes in behaviour. Angela’s wife Esther, whom she’s been with for 22 years, struggled with the way Angela’s personality changes affected their life together; Esther realised she couldn’t rely on Angela to supervise the children, and Angela’s relationship with her son became strained. With a daughter with low vision and both their children being neurodivergent — her son has been diagnosed with ADHD — Esther’s attention was in constant demand.

On top of that, because Angela remains physically well and fit, friends and family often didn’t understand the level of support she now needed, and wondered why Esther was being what they saw as ‘paranoid’ and ‘over-controlling’.

Angela and Esther on holiday

“Angela can’t understand why I stop her if she tries to take the children to do fun things. I end up feeling like a safeguarding officer. It can be very lonely and I’m permanently at the edge of what I can cope with without letting one of the plates I’m spinning fall.”

Since Angela’s diagnosis, taking a family holiday together had been rendered logistically and financially impossible. The family needed a break — but couldn’t afford the care that would be required on top of the price of the holiday itself. So when Dementia Adventure were recommended to Esther by a former colleague, she eagerly got in touch.

“I called your Head of Adventures and she was just so positive that you could help us. She even told me Dementia Adventure could help financially. To hear that Dementia Adventure would actually do this for us just felt like the most amazing discovery.”

When she got off her first call with Dementia Adventure, Esther cried. 

“It was so fundamentally life-changing that this could happen. I don’t know any other organisation who could have done it. What was different about Dementia Adventure was how much they listened in order to get things right and how from the very start they understood the challenges we face.”

Anxious in the run-up to the holiday, the moment Esther met Adventure Leader Jesse and Volunteer Tessa she knew everything would be alright. Their stay on a farm on the Isle of Wight prompted Angela to share memories of her own childhood with the children, and all their time spent outdoors really lifted her mood. The team’s warmth and expertise meant that they felt “like a ‘real’ family, doing normal things that families do”. And with the Dementia Adventure team taking care of everything, Esther got to be the mum and partner she wanted to be.

“The holiday and the support from Dementia Adventure had a huge impact on me as a carer. I didn’t have to cook, or clean up, or think about what was happening next and what everyone was doing. Having someone else lift the mental load was amazing. I could stop having to be someone I don’t want to be — the one standing apart, on alert, watching, and making sure nothing bad is about to happen. I got to have fun and my children got a mother who wasn’t worrying”.

Since returning home, the holiday has had a lasting impact: the family’s mindset has changed. “We feel less trapped now,” Esther says. “Our relationship with the children is better because we aren’t so stressed about everything.” Because they get out and do things more often the children are not only better at coping when Angela Mummy has had enough, but understanding why she’s had enough. Angela’s relationship with herself has improved, too — she’s rediscovered her self-value, both as an individual and an important and beloved member of the family.

“The reality is that without Dementia Adventure we would never have been able to go on a family holiday. We could never have afforded the cost of care. If you need their help, just ring Dementia Adventure up and have a conversation — they will work out how to make it happen.”

Are You Someone Who Can Help?