Our plan for giving better care to people with dementia Oxleas Dementia 2013-2016 November 2013 1
Contents 1. What is our plan about? 2. Finding out if someone has dementia 3. Finding out the care and help that people need 4. Working together to give people the best care 5. What care will we give? 6. Better care for people at the end of life 7. Better support for carers 8. How we will make sure the plan works 2
Who we are Oxleas NHS Foundation Trust offers healthcare to people in South London and Kent. What this plan is about This is our plan for giving people with dementia the best care we can. Dementia is an illness caused when parts of a person s brain stop working properly and where the problems caused, such as poor memory, get worse over time. People with dementia find it hard to remember things or can get confused. There is no cure for dementia, which gets more common with age. We talked to people with dementia and other people before making this plan. 3
The main things we will work on 1. Finding out if someone has dementia as quickly as possible If people find out they have dementia early on it can help them get better care. We will give staff more training to identify: when people may have dementia. what help they need. 2. Finding out what care people need We have a new way of helping people with dementia. It is called a memory service. Staff will find out if the person has dementia and what carethey need. We will look at ways for people to get more care in their local area. We will help your GP get memory services for you. We will work with other groups who support people with dementia and plan services. 4
3. Working together to give people the best care People with dementia may get care from lots of different people or groups. We want everyone to work well together to give people with dementia the best care. We will help staff from different places work better together to support people after they find out they have dementia. We will help make sure people with dementia don t go to hospital unless they need to. We will share more information with other groups who give people care. This will help us all know what needs to be done to help people with dementia. 4. Giving people care in the best place Many people with dementia want care at home, not in hospital. We will work with other groups who give people care to try and stop people going in to hospital. We will look at how we can use things like telecare, which can help people live safely at home. 5
5. Using pills to help people who feel very upset We will work with people to get the support and care they need to help with signs of distress and work out the best way to help. We will help people in care homes get better support. Sometimes people with dementia may feel very upset or worried the Doctor may give some pills to help with this. We will keep making sure people only get these pills if they really need them. 6. Better care for people at the end of their lives We will carry on giving people good care at home when they are near the end of their lives. This means people can stay at home and not go to a hospital or care home. We will give staff more training to help them support people with dementia at this time. 6
7. Better support for carers We will listen to carers who look after people with dementia and make sure they get the support they need. We will make sure we know who carers are and what support they need. We will give carers good support after the person they care for is told they have dementia. We will work together with carers and other groups that give carers support. We will find out what cares think of the support we give them. We will check with what you think of our services. They will give people care at home or near home. This means people won t need to go to hospital as much. 8. Finding out more about dementia We will help people find out more about Dementia and what care works best for them 7
9. How we will make sure the things in this plan happen We have good plans in place. We have a group of people who will check how well things are going. 8