It's coffee time and in Ashburton's St John Ambulance Hall a group of middle-aged and elderly people are chatting softly, some swapping experiences of caring for loved ones with dementia.Moon River plays softly in the background. On the table are pictures of film stars – a memory prodding game – a youthful Michael Caine wears his famous furrow.

Welcome to Ashburton's memory cafe, one of a number which are appearing in towns all over Teignbridge.Joan, not her real name, is caring for her husband who was diagnosed three years ago. They've been married 62 years.'I have been coming to the Memory Cafe since it started. At first my husband came with me very reluctantly because he was, and is, in total denial. It was only through this group that I met Jenny, the psychiatric nurse. She could see I needed help. She put me in touch with [the Community Mental Health team at] Templar House.'The hardest thing is where he is and what he is doing. In the night, he gets dressed and wants to go somewhere. It's had a devastating effect on my health. He is a good man and deserves looking after, but it is so hard sometimes you could kill him.'

Barbara Kiehne, from Buckfast, is there for the first time with her mother, Joyce, who has the condition.'I didn't know what to expect. They've all been very helpful and most welcoming.'The cafe is run by Ashburton and Buckfastleigh Rotary Club and has been going nearly a year.Rotarian Geoff Oakshott said that helpers normally outnumber customers.'We were advised it would be slow starting but it seems to be gathering momentum. It is the social side. Friends tend to withdraw because they don't feel comfortable.' Last year, its National Dementia Strategy, the government called for more memory cafes to be set up.

In Devon there are plans for 28 memory cafes in the county's market and coastal towns, in a joint project between Devon Partnership Trust and NHS Devon – formerly Devon Primary Care Trust .One in Newton Abbot is due to open on Thursday, March 18, at the Avenue Church, organised by the KingsCare League of Friends.Jim Delves, former chairman of the Alzheimer's Society in South Devon, and David Light, have been asked to coordinate the expansion of memory cafes. Jim set up one in Torbay and David got the Teignmouth one going. Now they have produced a how-to kit for other organisations who want to get one going.

'Memory cafes are great in the early stages of dementia. They provide peer support and help in getting a diagnosis,' said Jim Delves, from Dawlish.David, from Bishopsteignton, said: 'Each memory cafe is independent. They have two functions. To get people suffering with dementia into the system. Some don't want to go through their own doctor. You can take your loved one or yourself, and there is a community psychiatric nurse who can help support you.'Jim and David know all about caring for someone with dementia. Jim's wife Ingrid died in 2001 after suffering from vascular dementia for several years.

David's wife, Pam, also suffers from vascular dementia and is now in a nursing home as she is too ill for David to manage at home.For many years dementia was a shameful secret no one wanted to talk about – like cancer was 30 or more years ago. That is beginning to change. More of us are surviving longer and so can expect to get it. You have a one in three chance of suffering from dementia if you survive beyond 65.In fact, dementia is not an illness but a set of symptoms brought on by different illnesses. Alzheimers, the best known, accounts for 65 per cent of all cases in the over 65s. Vascular dementia caused by damage to the blood supply to the brain is the commonest type in the under 65s.

Another reason for increased openness is the courage of people like Sir Terry Pratchett, himself diagnosed with Alzheimer's, patron of the Alzheimer Research Trust, who is campaigning for dementia to be recognised as a national priority.In a recent report, the Alzheimer Research Trust estimated that dementia affects 820,000 people in the UK, costing the economy £23bn a year. Yet for every £1.30 spent on cancer research, just 5p goes on dementia.Jim's wife Ingrid was 63 when she started displaying strange behaviour, getting disoriented, wandering off, becoming angry and, on occasions, violent. Jim gave up his business as a design engineer so that he could care for her, but it was sometime before Jim could get a diagnosis.

'Ingrid went to the doctor several times and he described it as old age. The community psychiatric nurse just came out with it one day – "your wife is suffering from dementia". Nobody had said that before.'We were married 35 years. I was lucky, I had a wonderful marriage. Until I got a diagnosis I couldn't understand. I thought she was just becoming awkward.'

David and Pam have been married 50 years and, for seven or eight years, David cared for her at home. What started as odd behaviour deteriorated as she had a number mini strokes, 'At the end she was shouting a bit and began to get a little violent. How do you cope in the end? The only way to get out-of-hours help was to dial 999. An ambulance would turn up and paramedics would manage to get the tablets in. In the end I had a young lady doctor stay with me until one o'clock in the morning and said I couldn't go on like this.'

Jim said: 'When you give up a person you understand the load you have been under and that you can't have them back. You can't cope with the mass of emotions which rise to the surface 24 hours a day. You suffer a loss of purpose, you feel a failure, guilt rises to the surface.'They met at a carer's group and, frustrated at how scattered information was about local services, they got together to amalgamate it into a single document. The Dementia Carers' Pathways Devon covers everything from getting a diagnosis to benefits, to looking after yourself as a carer and contact numbers for a whole range of services. In January, the pair won an award from the Devon Partnership NHS Trust and it is now being copied in other parts of the country.

Memory cafes in Teignbridge Ashburton - 01364 653073 Bovey Tracey 01626 669216 Newton Abbot 01626 357090 Teignmouth 01626 771143 Dawlish coming soon