A named service for dementia advice and navigation is provided.
After you receive your diagnosis of dementia you will be contacted by a service which will provide you with dementia navigation. They will be your first point of contact for any information about post-diagnostic support for dementia. You should be provided with post-diagnostic information that is tailored to your needs, such as music therapy, art-based therapy, dementia cafes, peer support and allotment groups, and singing groups available in your local area.
At your first meeting with this service, they will help create or review your personalised dementia care plan. They will also discuss the dementia care pathway and discuss where you are up to on this document and how best to use it to inform what you can access in your community.
For extra information, evidence and best practice please scroll down to the bottom of the page.
Regional offerings
Dementia Navigation Standards for Greater Manchester
Dementia United developed a document that defines the key standards for dementia care navigation in Greater Manchester. It sets out an agreed understanding of what help people living with dementia and carers should receive to help them identify support and services suitable for them. Dementia United’s ambition was that the principles from this definition inform commissioning of dementia advisory and navigation services.
Weblink: https://dementia-united.org.uk/dementia-care-navigation-definition/
Weblink: https://dementia-united.org.uk/dementia-care-navigation-definition/
Dementia Wellbeing Plan for Greater Manchester; Dementia United
The Greater Manchester dementia wellbeing plan promotes personalised planning conversations with people living with dementia and carers about their needs and wants. The plan ensures an improved standard of care planning for people living with dementia and also facilitates sharing across the system. It will be available as a standardised plan which can be accessed and shared digitally between practitioners; as well as being available from the website for people affected by dementia to be using when having person centred care plan reviews
Weblink: https://dementia-united.org.uk/dementia-wellbeing-plan/
Weblink: https://dementia-united.org.uk/dementia-wellbeing-plan/
National offerings
Dementia Carers Count
Provide free carers courses, support and connecting carers up with a wider network, offer a virtual carers centre.
Weblink: https://dementiacarers.org.uk/
Weblink: https://dementiacarers.org.uk/
NICE Dementia Guidance
This guideline brings together all the research and evidence which covers assessment, diagnosis, treatment and support. It is for people at risk of developing dementia, people who are referred for assessment, people living with dementia as well as being for family and friends and health and social care staff and commissioners. It aims to improve care by making recommendations on standards people should expect to receive from their assessment, care and support as well as on training.
Weblinks:
We have provided links to the NICE guideline for dementia and a further link is provided to guidance on how to delay or prevent the onset of dementia.
National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) NG16 (2015) Dementia, disability and frailty in later life – mid-life approaches to delay or prevent onset: https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/ng16
National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) (2019) Dementia: assessment, management and support for people living with dementia and their carers: https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/ng97
Weblinks:
We have provided links to the NICE guideline for dementia and a further link is provided to guidance on how to delay or prevent the onset of dementia.
National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) NG16 (2015) Dementia, disability and frailty in later life – mid-life approaches to delay or prevent onset: https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/ng16
National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) (2019) Dementia: assessment, management and support for people living with dementia and their carers: https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/ng97
Together In Dementia Everyday (TIDE)
Providing resources e.g. Life Story work, dealing with living grief, legal information, As well providing a carers development programme, supporting and connecting up carers, sharing of stories - for family members and carers of people living with dementia.
Weblink: https://www.tide.uk.net/
Weblink: https://www.tide.uk.net/
Young Dementia UK
Support for young onset dementia (under 65); providing relevant information and also shares individual stories. This is also part of Dementia UK.
Telephone: Dementia UK Telephone: 0800 88 6678
Email: direct@dementiauk.org
Weblink: https://www.dementiauk.org/about-dementia/young-onset-dementia/
Telephone: Dementia UK Telephone: 0800 88 6678
Email: direct@dementiauk.org
Weblink: https://www.dementiauk.org/about-dementia/young-onset-dementia/
Healthwatch
Healthwatch is your health and social care champion. If you use GPs and hospitals, dentists, pharmacies, care homes or other support services, we want to hear about your experiences. As an independent statutory body, we have the power to make sure NHS leaders and other decision makers listen to your feedback and improve standards of care. Last year we helped nearly a million people like you to have your say and get the information and advice you need.
Telephone: Call: 03000 683 000 between the hours of 08:30 – 17:30 Monday to Friday
Email: enquiries@healthwatch.co.uk
Weblink: https://www.healthwatch.co.uk/your-local-healthwatch/list
Telephone: Call: 03000 683 000 between the hours of 08:30 – 17:30 Monday to Friday
Email: enquiries@healthwatch.co.uk
Weblink: https://www.healthwatch.co.uk/your-local-healthwatch/list
Dementia Tip Share
Dementia Tip Share Are A Treasure Chest of Tips: to help you to keep living as well as you can
From people with dementia, for people with dementia
Are you living with a diagnosis of dementia, or think you may have it?
If you want to learn from and share with others ‘in the same boat’, you’re in the right place!
Dementia Tip-Share website is bursting with Tips, work-arounds and short cuts. All from people with dementia themselves. And these will grow and grow.
The website aims to be clear, easy to use, searchable and informative. We’d love you to use it, contribute – and even become a Tip-Sharer yourself!
Ready to get going?
Finding your way around the site…
We have tried to make this website as accessible as possible. You can increase the size of the words, or if you prefer, you can listen instead of reading (click on tabs at top right of any page). To get back to the Home Page, just click on the Back to Home arrow at the top left of the pages, and to get back to the top of the page, just click on the box at the bottom right of the page.
We need to know which Tips people are finding most useful. So, if you like a Tip, please click on the ‘Like this Tip’ icon.
Our Tips
This is where you will find all sorts of Tips which we hope can help you live with your dementia more easily. There is a whole range of topics covered, such as ‘Tips for Life at Home’, ‘Tips for Money and Legal Matters’, ‘Tips for Connecting and Communication’… and many more. There are even Tips for coping with the Coronavirus situation.Share a Tip
We’re sure that many of you out there will have lots more great Tips and examples of things you do to manage your day-to-day life more easily. Use this page to tell us about them so we can add them to the site.Contributing will really make a difference to how Tip-Share grows and helps others. So we really hope you’ll join in, get involved and become part of the Tip-Sharer community.
Ask for a Tip
If you aren’t able to find a ‘Tip’ on the site that relates to the specific issue you are looking for, then the Tip-Share Community may be able to help. Just give us the details which we will pass on to our Tip-Sharers and wider resource team. Hopefully they will be able to highlight an existing solution or possibly even come up with a new idea or approach.Meet the Tip-Sharers
Meet (and hopefully join) our ever-expanding community of people who contribute Tips, work-arounds and short-cuts. These can help to make a real positive difference in the lives of those of us who live with dementia.The content of this website is solely and intentionally made up of Tips shared by people with dementia themselves. Innovations in Dementia is not able to take any responsibility for these, or to give ‘professional’ advice, information or sign-posting ourselves.
Evidence
The NICE quality standard [QS184] for dementia explains that people with dementia should have a single named practitioner to coordinate their care. The duties of the named practitioner should include:
- arrange an initial assessment of the person's needs, which should be face to face if possible
- provide information about available services and how to access them
- involve the person's family members or carers (as appropriate) in support and decision making
- give special consideration to the views of people who do not have capacity to make decisions about their care, in line with the principles of the Mental Capacity Act 2005
- ensure that people are aware of their rights to and the availability of local advocacy services, and if appropriate to the identification of an independent mental capacity advocate
- develop a care and support plan
One of the five aims from the Dementia Action Alliance 'The Carers' Call to Action' campaign, which aims to ensure that everyone who supports someone living with dementia knows their rights and is able to get the necessary level of support, states: Family carers of people with dementia should have access to a named person, with expertise in dementia care, who can give them personalised information, advice, support and co-ordination of care for the person with dementia.
Evidence demonstrates that people with dementia want to be connected with appropriate services and having someone specifically assigned to this role is both appropriate and valuable. It really does not matter what that person is called – connector, navigator, advisor, co-ordinator – but it does matter that the contact person is embedded in the care system, has the credibility and authority to act as an agent for the person with dementia within a well-defined geographical area and has the necessary communication skills to interact with clinical and other providers.