As many of you will know, the Parkinson's UK charity have been supporting the Lewy Body Society by taking and responding to telephone calls that we receive requesting information and advice. This has proved very successful and we are now looking to increase joint working and collaboration between the two charities which we believe will be mutually beneficial, bringing advantages to people with Lewy body related dementias and their families. The Lewy Body Society will continue to maintain its identity and we hope the changes will enable us to deliver more to our membership and further our objective of increasing awareness of DLB.

We intend to establish a group of experts and lay members which will function both as the Steering Group for the Lewy Body Society and as an Advisory Group on dementia within Parkinson's UK. The two organisations will jointly fund a new post to establish this group and to develop a business plan to meet the needs of people with DLB across the two organisations. We are aiming to appoint someone by the end of 2011.

In order to deliver on the Lewy Body Society's research objective we intend using Parkinson's UK's well-established research selection and governance processes to fund a second Lewy Body Society PhD student or to support a project grant of similar cost focussed on DLB. Further details of this will be advertised separately. We hope that you will be pleased to learn of these two new initiatives which we hope will bring benefits in our campaign against DLB.

From the Trustees of The Lewy Body Society