St Gabriel’s Church in Huyton Quarry launched Café 46, a dementia-friendly café, as part of a £30,000 redevelopment of its community hub and café area.
The café provides a safe and welcoming space for people living with dementia and their carers to connect over conversation, games, and creative activities. Café 46 meets every Monday in St Gabriel’s refurbished parish rooms.
The wider redevelopment has also created space for a computer support club, a lunch club serving 80 people, cognitive therapy sessions, and an after-school drop-in for parents and carers.
A £10,000 Connected Communities grant from the local council helped fund the project, alongside support from Together Liverpool’s Learning Communities programme, helping the church create a more sustainable and multi-purpose community space.
Watch our Story of Kindness video about the project:
One regular café guest Rita, who attends with husband Alan, said the group has become an important source of support and companionship, and connection with others. “With Alan having vascular dementia, we don’t get many places to socialise,” said Rita. “Coming here, we can socialise and now can do different things and join in and it’s nice to see him smiling.” She added: “I enjoy the company also. Being a carer, your social life is also curtailed so coming here is also a relief for me.”
The cafe has also become a valued part of her week for regular guest Jeanette, who comes with husband Tony said: “I do like coming here because there’s other carers here, which, I am a carer now.” Jeanette added: “It helps me a lot because there’s other people here with the same condition and there’s carers here, which helps because I find out what they’re going through, and it’s the same as what I’m going through.”
Rev Lynne Connolly, Associate Vicar at St Gabriel’s Church, said the café was created following conversations within the church community about how they could better support local people living with dementia and their carers. The church also took part in Together Liverpool’s Learning Communities programme, which helped shape the project.
Rev Lynne said:“For us it’s very missional because of things like the Church of England’s five marks of mission – number three is about giving care. We we are a church setting and we do feel we’re living out our faith in ways that hopefully we can serve and help people. I wish I could bottle that lovely feeling it gives you to know that actually today, for this couple, we have made a difference.”
Activities at the café are designed to encourage conversation, participation, and connection.
Volunteer Jan who helps run the cafe with three other volunteers, said: “We always have activities out. We try to rotate them each week. We have aqua painting, jigsaws which are specifically for people with dementia, snakes and ladders with no numbers on, cards to encourage them to talk. We’ve got lots of different sorts of activities.” Jan added: “The difference that it makes, I just think it’s immeasurable.”
