Dementia Trust launches new impact accelerator programme and awards first £45,000
Howard Lake | 3 July 2026 | News
The Dementia Trust, a Scotland-based charity with almost four decades of experience supporting people affected by dementia, has named the first recipient of its new Impact Accelerator programme. K.i.M, a sensory support tool for people living with dementia and their carers, has been awarded £45,000 to help move the project from prototype to a deployable product.
The Impact Accelerator Awards, delivered with support from Dementia Research UK, are designed to help science-backed and academic projects that have already built a solid evidence base take the next step towards real-world use. This could take the form of scaling up, embedding within services, or shaping policy and practice. K.i.M is the scheme’s first funded project.
Dylan Harper, chair of The Dementia Trust, said the award recognises projects that are ready to move beyond research, and that K.i.M has shown clear evidence of the difference the platform can make.
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Understanding sensory and cognitive changes that accompany dementia
K.i.M focuses on helping people understand the sensory and cognitive changes that can accompany dementia, both around diagnosis and afterwards, so that individuals, carers and families can better recognise what is happening and respond in ways that support independence for longer. Founder Kimberley Littlemore, herself a carer, said the funding would allow the team to build out the tool fully, having already learned a great deal from testing an initial prototype.
A short film linked to the announcement, “KiM the journey so far” from PocketMedicFilms, traces the project’s development. It features people with dementia and their carers describing sensory experiences that go well beyond memory loss, including altered perception, visual disturbances and difficulty filtering background noise or concentrating amid competing stimuli.
WATCH: KiM the journey so far
The film includes footage from Swansea’s dementia hub, where staff note that many visitors arrive with very limited understanding of dementia and often don’t know where to turn next. It also shows the team field-testing an early version of the assessment tool with families, gathering feedback on usability, such as making key controls more prominent, to feed into future development.
The next phase of work will concentrate on turning the prototype into a practical, accessible product ready for wider use.
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About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.