Improve awareness about dementia.
Establish comprehensive programmes of training and education for general practices. For example,
- ensure access to education and training for GPs and primary health care teams:
- through deaneries, commission system-wide programmes
- ensure practices have access to existing training resources
- find out more about training resources, such as
- The dementia gateway (Social Care Institute for Excellence, 2010)
- The open dementia e-learning programme (Social Care Institute for Excellence, 2009)
- establish a clinical lead for dementia in every practice
- broker opportunities for general practice clinical leads for dementia to share information, learning and resources, and to network
- commission dementia advisers to work with primary health care teams and provide post-diagnosis support for patients, carers and families
- engage with the local voluntary and community sector to broker support for general practices
- produce and disseminate a regular newsletter about dementia , including community activities and resources for people with dementia and their carers/families
- work with general practice managers to ensure that they are able to access and provide a range of information and resources about dementia for their practice, and on their practice website
Incentives and levers
- Build training targets into primary care contracts.
- Build dementia competencies into primary care contracts.
- Dementia Competency Framework (South West Dementia Partnership, 2011)
- Commissioning guidance: Caring, compassionate, skilled – transforming the dementia workforce (South West Dementia Partnership, 2011)
- Commissioner’s checklist – dementia services and workforce issues (South West Dementia Partnership, 2011)
- Include requirement for a general practice clinical lead for dementia within the primary care contract
- Introduce a CQUIN to specialist dementia services to provide liaison with, and training for general practice primary health care teams.
- Introduce a Local Enhanced Service contract.