Tributes paid to dementia charity co-founder

Tributes have been paid to an 89-year-old woman who helped start a dementia charity 13 years ago.

Margaret-Anne Tibbs was one of the founding members of Bedford-based Tibbs Dementia Foundation, which now runs 53 groups with over 100 volunteers to support families across Bedfordshire.

She started her career as a social worker in South Africa and in 1987 began to work in care home, which led her to become a specialist dementia social worker from 1989 to 1997.

She wrote and published books about the syndrome and for more than 35 years she "championed a simple idea: that dementia care should see the whole person, not the condition", a spokesperson from the charity said.

They added Tibbs died in her home on 30 October "surrounded by love" and with her family.

Tibbs co-founded Tibbs Dementia Foundation in 2013 with Sarah Russell, who she met at the Bedford branch of the Alzheimer's Society.

In 2008 the pair, alongside music therapist Jeni Melia, had started the therapy group Music 4 Memory.

In 2017 Tibbs started a blog following her husband's death and wrote that her posts were "an attempt to share new ideas and approaches" to treating the condition and were "rooted in my 35 years' experience working in the non-medical dementia field".

Russell, the charity's chief executive, said the foundation was started "with a shared belief and a few sums on the back of an envelope".

"When I saw her last week she was calm and ready, but still asking after our families and volunteers.

"She wanted everyone to know how proud she was of what we've built together, and how much she loved working with and learning from them all.

"We will miss her deeply, but her warmth and wisdom are in every song, every conversation and every cup of tea shared at Tibbs, and they always will be."

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