New board to oversee strategy to improve care and support for people with dementia
Politics A new delivery board to ensure care and support available for people with dementia continues to improve is due to be set up for West Sussex.
Back in 2014 West Sussex County Council, in partnership with the clinical commissioning groups, launched its first strategy for dementia.
A review of the Dementia Framework West Sussex 2014-19 notes a number of key successes as well as challenges and lessons learnt as a new strategy is due to be drawn up for 2020-25.
It notes that since 2014 the diagnosis rate for dementia has increased in the county from 46 per cent to 58 per cent in 2017. As of October 2018 the diagnosis rate was 66.16 per cent for the Coastal West Sussex CCG area, which includes the Chichester and Arun districts.
The review notes there has been ‘some good progress made’ since the launch of the framework in 2014 ‘but there is still more to do’.
It says: “The rise in the prevalence of dementia together with complexity has impacted greatly on capacity within services and it will be important to ensure future investment can continue to meet the rise in demand.
“Ringfenced funding for post-diagnostic support and co-ordinated systems between health and social care to support joint commissioning will be crucial to support the needs of this population.”
The review recommends that new priorities should be set for 2020 to 2025 and a joint delivery plan developed and agreed with a plan for co-ordinated local implementation.
It noted that a joint implementation group worked together to energise and influence commissioning and provision and to share information, but this disbanded relatively early in the framework.
Therefore there was a ‘lack of governance around delivery’ which ‘made it difficult to deliver on the outcomes effectively’.
The report concluded: “Robust monitoring, governance and leadership will therefore be necessary for the refreshed framework and it is recommended that a delivery board oversees the work to ensure there is sustained progress.
“The delivery board will need to have a status to be in a position to influence commissioning in context of increasing demand elsewhere across the health and social care economy.”
The review and the refresh of the dementia framework is due to be discussed by the West Sussex health and adult social care committee on Friday (March 15).
A number of successes are listed in the report due to be discussed later this week.
Sussex Partnership NHS Foundation Trust in partnership with Alzheimer’s Society is commissioned to deliver a memory assessment service which provides a diagnosis and time limited treatments for all groups of people and family carers.
Referrals into the service have increased exponentially since 2014.
Once people have had a diagnosis, dementia advisors and dementia support workers, jointly commissioned through Alzheimer’s Society, offer information, advice and support to the person and their family carers.
The dementia support service covers the whole of West Sussex and sees around 100 people with dementia and family carers each month.
Meanwhile the living well with dementia and dementia crisis services support people with complex and behavioural issues, helping avoid an average of 4,000 admissions in total in the last four years.
Local community networks are bringing together multidisciplinary staff who work as one team with people and carers to provide holistic care and support.
There are dementia action alliances in Selsey, Chichester and Bognor as well as Arun, working to make their areas welcoming and accessible for people living with dementia.