Home » Posts tagged 'support'
Tag Archives: support
“Living better” with dementia is desirable, but what does it mean for care?
After having thought about it for more than one year, I’ve concluded that the term ‘living well with dementia’ is not the right one. For a start, it implies some objective, sometimes unattainable, standard. Also, I feel that some people are clearly not well with dementia with the dreadful state of post-diagnostic care and support in some parts of the country, or personal symptoms which are difficult to manage (not living well with dementia from a lack of ability to communicate verbally, or intense ‘night terrors’). Each person living with dementia is more than the dementia, and I am mindful of not projecting an over sanitised portrayal of the dementias.
Somebody I truly admire in her work and general campaigning on dementia is Beth Britton. Beth has already made a huge impact in the co-production group at the CQC, and will, I am sure, make a massive impact on the Carers’ Commission. Having founded D4Dementia in May 2012, the blog was a finalist in the Roses Media Awards 2012 and has developed a huge following in the UK and internationally. The blog is genuinely loved and supported by thousands of families, carers, people with dementia, health and social care professionals, policy makers, leaders and anyone looking for a highly informative, personal and authoritative perspective on dementia.
I will publish my book ‘Living better with dementia: looking to the future’ later this year (around June – July 2015) with Jessica Kingsley Publishers. I feel that this book, although adopting both a domestic and international viewpoint, fits in very nicely with Beth’s corpus of impressively high quality work.
Chapter 1 provides an introduction to current policy in England, as it currently stands, including a review of the need for a ‘timely diagnosis’ as well as a right to timely post-diagnostic care. This has been a vocal concern of Baroness Sally Greengross, the current Chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group for dementia.
In England, the issue of the ‘timely diagnosis’ is an exquisitely sensitive one.
We’re lucky Beth, Ming Ho and Sal Marciano have contributed to this debate: viz:
Other carers, Beth Britton, Sally Ann Marciano and Ming Ho contributed their experience emphasising that support is essential and that good outcomes for the whole family, in addition to those of the person with dementia, should be taken into consideration.
This chapter also provides an overview of the current evidence base of the hugely popular “Dementia Friends” campaign run very successfully by the Alzheimer’s Society and Public Health England, to raise awareness about five key ‘facts’ about dementia. It was intended that this campaign should help to mitigate against stigma and discrimination that can be experienced by people living with dementia and their caregivers. The ‘proof of the pudding’ will come when the outcome of turning communication into action is assessed objectively.
Chapter 2 comprises a preliminary analysis of stigma, citizenship and the notion of ‘living better with dementia’. This chapter explains the urgency of the need to “frame the narrative” properly. This chapter also introduces the “Dementia Alliance International” group, which has fast become a highly influential campaigning force by people living with dementia for people living with dementia.
It is hoped that openness in discussion will help to mitigate against a deeply entrenched stigma by some.
Beth advises, in the Huffington Post, that:
As Margaret Thatcher joins the many people with dementia who have passed before her, and debates rage about her political legacy, I would argue that this is a time to talk as openly about her most recent experiences as it is to reflect on her career. An opportune moment for us all to think about what having dementia means, whether you are a former prime minister, a doctor, a professor, a grocer, a bus conductor or a refuse collector. Dementia brings a whole new meaning to being ‘all in this together’.
Chapter 3 looks at the various issues facing the timely diagnosis and post-diagnostic support of people living with dementia from diverse cultural backgrounds, including people from black, Asian and ethnic minority backgrounds, people who are lesbian, bisexual, gay or transsexual, and people with intellectual difficulties. Attention is paid to the various intricate ways in which exact culture can impact not only on the timely diagnosis of dementia but also in the post-diagnostic care.
Chapter 4 looks at the issue of how different jurisdictions around the world have formulated their national dementia strategies. Examples discussed of countries and continents are Africa, Australia, China, Europe, India, Japan, New Zealand, Puerto Rico and Scotland. There is remarkable convergence in the efforts of various jurisdictions, and it is here I first introduce the critical importance of collaboration. A major plus here has been the contribution of the Alzheimer’s Disease International in their work on the need for national dementia policies, and how to implement them.
Chapter 5 looks at the intense care vs care debate which has now surfaced in young onset dementia. There is a potentially problematic schism between resources being allocated into drugs for today and resources being used to fund adequately contemporary care to promote people living better with dementia. An example is discussed of how the policy of ‘Big Data’ had gathered momentum across a number of jurisdictions, offering personalised medicine as a further potential component of “person-centred care”.
This chapter also considers the impact of the diagnosis of younger onset dementia on the partner of the person with dementia as well. It can never be considered that a diagnosis is given in isolation:
As Beth remarks,
For us, devoid of any additional support or resources, we simply had to learn about dad’s dementia as it progressed, inevitably making mistakes along the way, but always trying our best to understand what his life was like and what he needed. Through the work I do now, I aim to use that knowledge to improve the lives of all those who are touched by dementia, increasing awareness and education in society as a whole, and transforming the care given to people with dementia and their families.
A candid description in my book was also given about the possible sequelae of the diagnosis of young onset dementia on employment, caregivers, and in social isolation.
Chapter 6 focuses on delirium, or the acute confusional state, and dementia. It attempts to explain why delirium and dementia might converge in policy, after all. There are general issues of whether it is possible to inject incentives into the system at critical points. However, in parallel with this, there is an active debate as to why delirium (however so labeled) is not picked up sometimes in hospital, why people who experience an episode of delirium can do quite badly in the long run, and what to do in the special case of a person living with dementia with delirium superimposed on that.
Chapter 7 is the largest chapter in this book, and takes as its theme care and support networks. I make no apologies about the length of this chapter, as I have been hugely influenced by the Dementia Action Alliance Carers Call to Action in the last year.
Beth comments that:
Most carers are totally unprepared for what caring will involve and have no idea when their caring role will end. They often ‘fall into’ caring, simply by taking on small responsibilities that escalate, triggering experiences that untrained family carers can find very difficult to cope with.
There is huge interest internationally in the subject of ‘what makes a good care home’, as Beth comments:
For me the gold-standards that every family should be looking for from a care home are person-centred care, compassion, dignity and respect. You want to know that your loved one will be treated as an individual in every possible aspect – not just another box to tick on a care plan. You also want to know that they will have access to anything and everything that constitutes therapeutic dementia care, and not just a range of set ‘activities’ that they have no interest in participating in.
The idea of families and professionals working side by side is a very powerful one.
Beth takes this idea up here:
This shows that when families and professionals work side-by-side it often creates a unique, and holistic, model of care. Relatives can also benefit from the support and knowledge that professionals caring for their loved one can provide in challenging times.
It should never be the case that those who have spent years being educated in their subject feel that their clinical training and evidence based approach carries greater weight, or that families adopt the viewpoint that their emotional ties and personal experience is all that is needed to effectively care for their loved one.
In my book, an overview of how patient-centred care is different from person-centred care is given, and how person-centred care differs from relationship-centred care. I feel, personally, that the literature has thus far excessively focused on the ‘dyadic relationship’ between the person with dementia and caregiver, but a need to enlarge this to a professional in a ‘triangle of care’ and extended social networks was further elaborated and emphasised.
Different care settings are described, including care homes, hospitals – including acute hospital care, and intermediate care. This chapter first introduces the critical role of clinical nursing specialists in dementia in providing proactive case management in a person-centred care philosophy.
However, Beth is right, in my opinion, to bring up the notion that “care homes are not police states“; rather care homes could be open to scrutiny whilst being part of an extended community.
Britton has her suspicions about the events that led to this crisis, but she is unable to prove them. Based on that experience, she supports the idea of CCTV in care home rooms on an opt-in basis: “A camera might not have saved his life, but it would have told us what happened. However, I don’t think they should be put everywhere for everyone. We don’t want to turn care homes into a police state.”
Chapter 8 considers eating for living well with dementia. This chapter considers enforceable standards in care homes, including protection against malnutrition or undernutrition. The main focus of the chapter is how people with dementia might present with alterations in their eating behaviour, and how the mealtime environment must be a vital consideration for living better with dementia. Eating well with dementia is clearly not all about finger snacks and the such like.
Chapter 9 looks at a particular co-morbidity, incontinence. Focusing on the various co-morbidities will be an opportunity of a whole person approach for a person living with dementia, during health as well as illness. The emphasis of this chapter is on conservative approaches for living well with dementia and incontinence. Other issues considered here are the impact of incontinence on personhood per se, and the possible impact on the move towards an institutional home.
Incontinence for a person living well with dementia is not all about pads. We have to, as a society, wish to talk about incontinence for people living with dementia, and I am hoping this chapter is a help.
I feel Beth has been instrumental – in her work – in breaking down societal taboos, for example:
How do you feel about the idea of needing someone to dress you, wash you, help you to the toilet or change your incontinence pads, feed you, give you medication, move you around, and enable you to watch the TV programmes of your choosing or listen to the music that you love?
This is day-to-day life for the many people who receive care. Such dependence can happen at any age, but it becomes more likely as you get older, making the need for care something people fear the most as they approach their mature years.
Chapter 10 argues how the needs for people living better with dementia would be best served by a fully integrated health and social care service in the form of “whole person care”. This chapter provided the rationale behind this policy instrument in England. This chapter argues how the needs for people living better with dementia would be best served by a fully integrated health and social care service. Currently too many NHS patients cannot be discharged out of social care in a timely fashion.
We certainly do need to be looking forward to the future now.
As Beth says,
In 15 years’ time we must have a health and social care system that is (finally) fully integrated. The UK should be leading the way in providing aged care, and recognising and fully supporting the role of family carers. More broadly, I want to be living in a society that makes ageing something we embrace and nurture, not something to be sneered at, marginalised and locked away.
Chapter 11 considers the importance of the social determinants of health. The framework, I argue, is eminently sensible for organising one’s thoughts about dementia friendly communities. The focus of this chapter is housing. I focused on design of buildings in my previous book ‘Living well with dementia’, but I wished to articulate here the wider context of the importance of housing for a person living well with dementia. Housing for living well with dementia is not just about buildings, and is pivotally enmeshed with the person centred care philosophy of projected English policy.
With such a broad brush tool as equality and “dementia friendly communities”, the scope for squashing diversity is enormous. Few topics enter the realms of “one glove does not fit all” to the same degree as the potential use of global positioning systems for dementia. Chapter 12 considers whether ‘wandering’ is the most appropriate term. The main emphasis of this chapter is the legal and ethical considerations in the use of ‘global positioning systems’ in enhancing the quality of life of persons with dementia and their closest ones. A central theme of this chapter is what might be best for the piece of mind of the person in a caring role might not be entirely synchronous as the wishes of the person himself or herself with dementia. To show how extreme the term “wandering” potentially becomes, I am aware of some friends of mine living with dementia who simply wish to go for a pleasant walk, but are frightened of being labeled as “wanderers”.
Chapter 13 considers head-on a number of important contemporary issues, with a main emphasis on human rights and “rights based approaches”. While there is no universal right to a budget, the implementation of personal budgets is discussed. This policy strand is indeed very complex. The chapter progresses to consider a number of legal issues which are arising, including genetic discrimination in the US jurisdiction, dementia as a disability under the equality legislation in England, and the importance of rights-based approaches for autonomy and dignity.
Nonetheless, “personalisation” remains a powerful strand in policy across many successive governments.
As Beth notes – in an apolitical way:
The first and most important thing to stress is that everyone is an individual, so what works for one person won’t work for another. True quality of life is only achieved through personalisation, therefore it is vital that everything you help someone with dementia to do, achieve or enjoy is what they have or would choose for themselves.
Too often the debate about dementia can be engulfed in a diatribe about ‘cost’ not ‘value’. Persons living better with dementia wish to contribute effectively with the outside world, and the feeling is mutual. Chapter 14 is primarily concerned with art and creativity, which can be incredibly empowering for some people trying to live better with dementia. This chapter takes as its focus on how living with dementia could lead to art and creativity. This chapter also looks at the exciting developments in our understanding of the perception of music in people living with dementia, and why music has the potential to enhance the quality of life for a person living well with dementia through its intrinsic features as a reward.
Too often the focus in international policies is on medications.
I believe the interest in ‘reminiscence’ is very well deserved.
Beth describes it thus:
Dad’s room was filled with pictures, cushions depicting farmyard scenes and life-like soft toy animals – everything chosen because it told some part of his story. At the heart of that was dad’s memory box displaying captioned photographs charting dad’s life from his birth to mine, alongside emblems that represented his home county and favourite football team.
All of these reminiscence therapies combined to keep dad’s identity alive, much in the same way that resources like Memory Bank can do for people who are living with dementia today. These aids help to focus on the uniqueness of the individual, and provide focal points for conversation that ensure each person’s story is brought to life.
Chapter 15 looked at the triggering of football sporting memories in people living well with dementia. This chapter considers the cognitive neuroscience of the phenomenon of this triggering, and presents a synthesis of how the phenomenon could be best explained through understanding the role of emotional memory in memory retrieval, how autobiographical memories are represented in the human brain usually, the special relevance of faces or even smells such as “Bovril”. The triggering of football memories may have some neuroscientific commonalities with the triggering of musical memories, and it will be interesting in the future to identify carefully which people living better with dementia benefit from such reminiscence approaches.
Chapter 16 looks at the impact of various innovations in English dementia policy, giving as examples including service provision (such as the policy on reducing inappropriate use of antipsychotics or the policy in timely diagnosis) and research. This policy goes through the current evidence for this evidence in particular detail, and considers how culture change may be effected internationally for quality in this policy area. This chapter tries to convey the complexity of the issue, and to explain in a fair way why deep down in this policy plank are traditional concerns to do with ‘continuity of care’ and ‘valid consent’.
Chapter 17 looks at how leadership could be promoted by people living with dementia themselves. I first introduce the need for this in Chapter 2. Chapter 17 considers who might lead the change, where and when, and why this change might be necessary to ‘recalibrate’ the current global debate about dementia. This chapter considers how change might be brought about from the edge, how silos might be avoided, the issue of ‘tempered radicals’ in the context of transformative change to wellbeing as an outcome; and finally how ‘Dementia Champions’ are vital for this change to be effected.
Finally, I attempt a Conclusion at Chapter 18.
Continuity of care and support is vital in dementia policy. We are a long way from that.
In a way, the second ever English dementia policy poses more of an acid test than the first one. The reason for this is because we already have a set of yardsticks by which the first five years can be assessed, with a view to projecting forewards.
I don’t doubt the enthusiasm with which we have tried to close the ‘diagnosis gap’ in England. The heart of this is the high quality diagnosis, as stipulated in the original policy co-authored by Prof Sube Banerjee at Brighton and Sussex Medical School. What we have tended towards, rather, is a culture of high volume mediocre quality. And people readily admit they would rather wait that little bit longer to get the correct diagnosis.
I do not subscribe to the idea that anyone can easily make a diagnosis of dementia. When a diagnosis of dementia is finally given, it’s given not just to the person with dementia, but to his or her friends, or her family. As Kate Swaffer says, she is not a person with dementia primarily; she is a person with friends, family and feelings.
This approach prioritising the person has to be right from the word go. We are all persons, but we become patients when we become ill enough to present to the health and care services or not. We become paying consumers when we part with money. We are consumers if we spend any resources from the pot of money paid into from national insurance.
And so on. This analysis of money is a sideshow only as far as to how to service is delivered is actually matters. If you have services in dementia and support commissioned in a highly piecemeal manner, at worst from clinical commissioning groups who don’t know what wellbeing is, nor what they’re looking for, it can be a mess.
The hunt is definitely on for effective commissioning as well as any commissioning at all. The next Government will have to provide much better clarity on this, and some objective guidelines on how, say, the delivery of wellbeing might be ensured on an ongoing basis, not just at the start and finish of a commissioning contract.
But it is the fragmented approach from different providers which is a threat. Low pay of carers, not meeting the national minimum wage, or zero hour contracts, is a problem, and the reason specifically why private providers can be an issue here is that large corporates with scrupulous employment practices can hide behind a veil of being unperturbed from freedom of information legislation.
It is very easy to argue that entire health policy, and even dementia policy, is not political. I don’t believe this is justifiable for a minute. How we prioritise care at all is a reflection of our collective solidarity as a society, and our success in ‘pooling risk’. If I know for example I have a high genetic risk of developing a dementia from my genetic make up, my insurance premiums is likely to go through the roof unless there is tight anti-genetic discrimination law in place in England (which there isn’t).
Having a piecemeal system promotes lack of continuity of care. I think this is fatal for any new English dementia strategy. I think this piecemeal system, whether an artefact of private markets or not, or political ideology, can adversely affect people living with dementia and carers in a number of different ways.
First of all, the caregiver relationship, whether paid or unpaid as carer, fundamentally depends on that caregiver knowing the person with dementia. The happiest relatives I have ever spoken to are the ones who report that they haven’t had a regular changing of the guard as regard carers. This is important for building meaningful relationships with time, as people with Alzheimer’s disease for much of their time, even if they have weak memories for events have strong enduring memories for emotions. Besides, change here can be very distressing, and mental distress can impact on lack of physical wellbeing (although ill being is not necessarily the same as lack of wellbeing).
Secondly, continuity of care by a physician or an appropriate specialist in clinical psychology acts as a safeguard to check the actual diagnosis is right. Some initial cognitive impairments do not progress – they remain mild. A ‘wrong diagnosis’ of dementia does not necessarily mean someone has goofed up as such – it could mean that something that was predicted to progress didn’t. The drive to diagnosing dementia, particularly with financial incentives, could mean we accidentally mislabel mild cognitive impairment as dementia, and this is clearly a tragedy for all involved.
Therefore, a diagnosis disclosure can never be a single hit and run event. There needs to be follow up from the system, whether it’s by the same GP, a hospital physician or psychiatrist, a different member of the memory clinic possibly somewhere totally different; a second ‘set of eyes’ to see whether the initial diagnosis is correct. Granted I agree that knowing what the diagnosis is can be the key to opening services, being armed with information and hence empowered, and all the usual arguments, but the diagnosis must be correct. There is no alternative on this.
Say, for example, you are in fact depressed, not living with dementia, and a clinician in a hurry informs you you are living with dementia. You have presented in response to the question, “Do you have problems with your memory?”. Such a misdiagnosis is likely to make you even more depressed; and not receiving effective treatment for depression, whether as a psychological therapy or medication, or otherwise.
Thirdly, somebody who knows a person well will be able to spot when a person with dementia changes in any way. This could be a ‘difference’, such as the development of a sweet tooth, a ‘deterioriation’ such as in memory, or even an ‘enhancement’ as in acquisition of a love of music, or artistic and creative talents. You can only ascertain this with time. This is where the idea of the review has to change fundamentally.
I don’t feel this review should take place in the hands of medics who repeat scans and tests, ask a few random questions, and document the decline (as dementia is progressive if it is not ‘reversible’ such as vitamin deficiency). Implementation of a ‘year of care’ for dementia, or a national network of clinical specialist nurses, will be able to manage a caseload of individuals living well in a pro-active fashion, each with an individualised care plan; where the goal is to live well, not to firefight in a crisis.
Fourthly, the fundamental crunch time for a person living with dementia is an inability to retain information for a decision, an inability to make that decision, and an inability to communicate that decision. The starting point is that we can make decisions or have ‘capacity’. This capacity can come or go; and it’s dangerous if we get into the mindset that capacity is all or nothing, but that is the legal shortcut we have in place.
But this capacity needs review on a regular basis, as it fundamentally changes our view as to whether a person can consent or not. People living with diffuse lewy body dementia, for example, can notice themselves one day they’re performing quite well, other days not so well. If we don’t get into the good practice of reviewing capacity and consent on a regular basis, through continuity of care, we will easily arrive at a situation where people are languishing inappropriately on medications. It’s generally felt that, while appropriate for some, antipsychotics prescribing is too high, often inappropriately; some side effects such as drooling of the mouth can be very distressing. It’s currently, rightly, a plank of policy to address the inappropriate prescription of antipsychotics particularly in care homes.
In summary, the ideal would be somebody to accompany a person from the point of diagnosis to the time of end of life; not chopping and changing. I was told by a senior specialist nurse at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery, Katy Judd, that one of the most disturbing phenomena for persons with dementia and families is when their ‘contacts’ have ‘moved on’ on such a frequent basis. There clearly needs to be proper signposting with the system, known as care coordinators, but we need to avoid the situation where there is an abundance of signposts and a dearth of frontline care.
But I feel fundamentally continuity of care and support is critical. Having the same mutual followers on a social network on Twitter has the potential to improve wellbeing, and having somebody there by you that you trust is likely to have the same effect. People living with dementia who are stimulated psychologically by positive experiences are likely to find their experience fundamentally of a different nature to those who don’t.
For these reasons I feel that, whatever tactics are used, and whichever government is in office and/or power in England, for the next few years, an overall strategy of prioritising the continuity of care is pivotal.
An overview of my book ‘Living better with dementia: champions for enhanced communities”.
I hope you find this overview of my book ‘Living better with dementia: champions for enhanced communities’ useful.
It is written by me.
And the Forewords are Prof Alistair Burns, the England clinical lead for dementia, Kate Swaffer (Alzheimer’s Australia, Dementia Alliance International, and University of Wollongong, Australia), Chris Roberts (Dementia Action Alliance Carers Call to Action, Dementia Alliance International), and Dr Peter Gordon (Consultant Psychiatrist in dementia and cognitive disorders, NHS Scotland).
It will primarily assess where we’ve got to, along with other countries, in improving diagnosis and post-diagnostic care, and assess realistically the work still yet to be done.
My thesis will articulate why the ‘reboot’ of the global “dementia friendly communities” must now take account of various issues to be meaningful. It will argue for a difference in emphasis from competitive ‘nudge’ towards universal legal and enforceable human rights promoting dignity and autonomy.
It will also argue that dementia friendly communities are meaningless unless there is a shift in the use of language away from ‘sufferers’ and ‘victims’, while paying tribute to the successful “Dementia Friends” initiative.
It will, further, argue that dementia friendly communities are best served by a large scale service transformation to ‘whole person care’, and provide the rationale for this. A critical factor for enhancing the quality of life of people living better with dementia will be to tackle meaningfully the social determinants of health, such as housing and education.
The thesis will also argue that dementia friendly communities must also value the behaviours, skills and knowledge of caregivers in wider support networks. This is essential for the development of a proactive service, with clinical specialist nursing input deservedly valued, especially given the enormous co-morbidity of dementia.
This title will be published by Jessica Kingsley Publishers, in early 2015.
Chapters overview
Chapter 1 provided an introduction to current policy in England, including a review of the need for a ‘timely diagnosis’ as well as a right to timely post-diagnostic care. This chapter also provided an overview of the current evidence base of the hugely popular “Dementia Friends” campaign run by the Alzheimer’s Society and Public Health England, to raise awareness about five key ‘facts’ about dementia. It was intended that this campaign should help to mitigate against stigma and discrimination that can be experienced by people living with dementia and their caregivers.
Chapter 2 comprised a preliminary analysis of stigma, citizenship and the notion of ‘living better with dementia’. This chapter explained the urgency of the need to “frame the narrative” properly. This chapter also introduced the “Dementia Alliance International” which has fast become a highly influential campaigning force by people living with dementia for people living with dementia.
Chapter 3 looked at the various issues facing the timely diagnosis and post-diagnostic support of people living with dementia from diverse cultural backgrounds, including people from black, Asian and ethnic minority backgrounds, people who are lesbian, bisexual, gay or transsexual, and people with prior learning difficulties.
Chapter 4 looked at the issue of how different jurisdictions around the world have formulated their national dementia strategies. Examples discussed of countries and continents were Africa, Australia, China, Europe, India, Japan, New Zealand, Puerto Rico and Scotland.
Chapter 5 looked at the intense care vs care debate which has now surfaced in young onset dementia, with a potentially problematic schism between resources being allocated into drugs for today and resources being used to fund adequately contemporary care to promote people living better with dementia. An example was discussed of how the policy of ‘Big Data’ had gathered momentum across a number of jurisdictions, offering personalised medicine as a further potential compontent of person-centred care. This chapter also considered the impact of the diagnosis of younger onset dementia on the partner of the person with dementia as well. A candid description was also given about the possible sequelae of the diagnosis of young onset dementia on employment, caregivers, and in social isolation.
Chapter 6 focused on delirium, or the acute confusional state, and dementia. It considered the NICE guidelines for delirium, and the pitfalls in considering the relationship between delirium and dementia in English policy.
Chapter 7 was the largest chapter in this book, and took as its theme care and support networks. An overview of how patient-centred care is different from person-centred care was given, and how person-centred care differs from relationship-centred care. The literature inevitably has thus far focused on the ‘dyadic relationship’ between the person with dementia and caregiver, but a need to enlarge this to a professional in a ‘triangle of care’ and extended social networks was further elaborated and emphasised. Finally, the importance of clinical specialist nurses in ‘dementia friendly communities’ was argued, as well as the Dementia Action Alliance’s “Carers Call to Action”. Different care settings were described, including care homes, hospitals – including acute hospital care, and intermediate care.
Chapter 8 considered eating for living well with dementia. This chapter considered enforceable standards in care homes, including protection against malnutrition or undernutrition. The main focus of the chapter was how people with dementia might present with alternations in their eating behaviour, and how the mealtime environment must be a vital consideration for living better with dementia.
Chapter 9 looked at a particular comorbidity, incontinence. The emphasis was on conservative approaches for living well with dementia and incontinence. Other issues considered were the impact of incontinence on personhood per se, and the possible impact on the move towards an institutional home.
Chapter 10 argued how the needs for people living better with dementia would be best served by a fully integrated health and social care service. This chapter provided the rationale behind this policy instrument in England. The chapter also considered various aspects of what would be likely to make ‘whole person care’ work, including data sharing, collaborative leadership, care-coordinators, responsible and accountable ‘self care’, and the multi-disciplinary team. This chapter also considered how it was impossible to divorce physical health from mental health and social care, and explained the intention of the longstanding drive towards ‘parity of esteem’ in English policy.
Chapter 11 considered the importance of the social determinants of health. A focus of this chapter was on education, and its impact on a person living with dementia. However, the main focus of this chapter was housing, including ‘dementia friendliness, downsizing, and green or public spaces.
Chapter 12 considered whether ‘wandering’ is the most appropriate term. The main emphasis of this chapter were the legal and ethical considerations in the use of ‘global positioning systems’ in enhancing the quality of life of persons with dementia and their closest ones.
Chapter 13 considered a number of important contemporary issues, with a main emphasis on human rights and “rights based approaches”. While there is no universal right to a budget, the implementation of personal budgets was discussed. The chapter progressed to consider a number of legal issues which are arising, including genetic discrimination in the US jurisdiction, dementia as a disability under the equality legislation in England, and the importance of rights-based approaches for autonomy and dignity. Finally, the issue of engagement was considered.
Chapter 14 was primarily concerned with art and creativity. This chapter took as its focus on how living with dementia could lead to art and creativity, and how the cultural needs of people living with dementia could best be furnished through laughter, poetry and art galleries or museums. This focus also looked at the exciting developments in our understanding of the perception of music in people living with dementia, and how music has the potential to enhance the quality of life for a person living well with dementia.
Chapter 15 looked at the triggering of football sporting memories in people living well with dementia. This chapter considered the cognitive neuroscience of the phenomenon of this triggering, and presented a synthesis of how the phenomenon could be best explained through understanding the role of emotional memory in memory retrieval, how autobiographical memories are represented in the human brain usually, the special relevance of faces or even smells such as “Bovril”.
Chapter 16 looked at the impact of various innovations in English dementia policy, giving as examples including service provision (such as the policy on reducing inappropriate use of antipsychotics or the policy in timely diagnosis) and research. This chapter also contemplated the principal factors affecting how innovations can become known, and what ultimately determines their success.
Chapter 17 looked at how leadership could be promoted by people living with dementia. This chapter considered who might lead the change, where and when, and why this change might be necessary to ‘recalibrate’ the current global debate about dementia. This chapter considered how change might be brought about from the edge, how silos might be avoided, the issue of ‘tempered radicals’ in the context of transformative change to wellbeing as an outcome; and finally how ‘Dementia Champions’ are vital for this change to be effected.
Please note that Beth is not endorsing this book – this image is entirely separate and is taken from the main event for G8 dementia – we’re all proud of Beth’s work meanwhile!
A lot more unites us in English dementia policy than divides us, potentially
It’s sometimes hard to see the big picture in the policy of England regarding dementia.
I don’t mean this in terms of the three key policy strands of the strategy, which is currently the Prime Minister’s Dementia Challenge. This extra layer was added onto the English dementia strategy, “Living well with dementia”, from 2009-2014.
There will be a renewal of this strategy next year. We currently don’t know what Government will be in office and power in 2015. But I am hoping the overall direction of travel will be a positive one. I would say that, wouldn’t I?
There are 3 dementia challenge champion groups, each focusing on 1 of the main areas for action: driving improvements in health and care, creating dementia friendly communities and improving dementia research.
But it is in my political philosophy to encourage a pro-social approach, not a fragmented one.
I’d like to see people working together. This can all too easily be forgotten in competitive tendering for contracts.
And things can be just as competitive in the third sector as for corporates.
This is the clinical lead for dementia in England, Prof Alistair Burns, who has oversight over all these complicated issues.
But we need to have a strong focus for the public good, especially as regards looking after the interests of people living with dementia, and their closest including all caregivers. State-third sector initiatives can work brilliantly for particular outcomes, such as encouraging greater sharing of basic information about dementia, but all concerned will hopefully feel that the people whose interests we want to protect the most benefit from a plural space with many stakeholders.
There is definitely a huge amount which has been achieved in the last few years. I do definitely agree with Sally Greengross, Chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group for dementia, that we should really take stock of what has worked and what hasn’t worked so well in the last five years, in our wish to move forward.
I say this, as it has come to my attention while reviewing the current state-of-play in policy and in research that there are potentially problematic faultlines.
1. One is diagnosis.
On the one hand, some people feel that we are under diagnosing dementia, and that there are people languishing in England waiting for a diagnosis for weeks or months.
Chris Roberts, himself living with a dementia, and a greater advocate for people living with dementia, often warns that it is essential that, despite the wait, that the diagnosis is correct.
I know of someone else in the USA who has battled on for years while waiting for a diagnosis of dementia, despite having symptoms of dementia.
On the other hand, there are concerns, particularly if teams in primary care are financially incentivised for doing so, that there might be a plethora of over diagnosed cases.
The concern here is that there might be alternative interests for why such people might be diagnosed, such as being recipients of compounds from drug companies which attach to proteins in the brain, and which might be useful in diagnosing dementia.
Or we are building a ‘new model army’ of people who are ageing, but being shoehorned into the illness model because of their memory problems?
2. Another is potential ‘competition’ between dementia charities.
Essentially, all dementia charities in England want the same thing, and will need to attract an audience through various ‘unique selling points’ through that awful marketing terminology.
But in the next few years we may see commissioning arrangements change where the NHS may involve the third sector doing different complementary rôles, such as advising and providing specialist nursing, in the same contractual arrangement.
The law might force people to work together here.
3. Another is the ‘cure versus care’ schism.
This debate has accelerated in the last few years, with the perception – rightly or wrongly – that cure – in other words the drive to find a magic bullet for dementia – is vying for attention with care. This narrative has a complicated history in fact, in parallel with moves in the US which likewise have overall seen a trend towards some people wishing for a ‘smaller state’.
But claims about finding a cure for dementias have to be realistic, and, while comparisons can be made with HIV and cancer about the impact of a cure has for absolving stigma potentially, such a debate has been done incredibly carefully.
For example, attention for cures and collaboration between Pharma and ‘better regulation’ constitute a diversion of resources away from care, potentially. In the NHS strategy for England, with social care on its knees, a drive towards personalised medicine on the back of advances from the Human Genome Project can end up looking vulgar.
I’ve also seen with my own eyes how the ‘cure vs care’ schism has seen different emphases amongst different domestic and international dementia conferences, with some patently putting people with dementia in the driving seat, and some less so (arguably).
4. Another is the exact emphasis of ‘dementia friendly communities’.
It is impossible to object to the concept of inclusivity and accessibility of communities, with recognition of the needs of people living with the various dementias.
But the term itself is possibly not quite right; as Kate Swaffer says, a leading international advocate on dementia, you would never dream of ‘black friendly communities’ or ‘gay friendly communities’ as a term.
Another issue is what the precise emphasis of dementia friendly communities is: whether it is an ideological ‘nudge’ for companies and corporates to enable competitive advantage, or whether it is driven by a more universal need to enshrine human rights and equality law.
As Toby Williamson from the Mental Health Foundation mooted, the need for an employer to make reasonable adjustments for cognitive disAbility is conceptually and legally is actually the same as the need for an employer to build an access ramp for a person who is in a wheelchair and physically disabled?
There can also be a problem in who wishes to be “the dominant stakeholder”. Is it the person with dementia? Or unpaid caregiver? Or paid carer? Or professional such as CPN, physio, OT, speech and language therapist, neurologist, physician or psychiatrist? Is it a dementia adviser or specialist nurse?
If we are to learn the lessons from the Carers’ Trust/RCN “Triangle of Care”, it is essential to learn from all stakeholders in the articulation of a personalised care and support plan? I feel this is important in whole person care if we are to have such plans in place, which recognise professional pro-active clinical help, in trying to assist in avoidable admissions to hospital.
But here we have to be extremely careful. An admission to hospital or appearance at A&E should not always be sign of ‘failure’ of care in the community.
5. Yet another source of division is that we all do our own things.
This is problematic, if we do our own things. We end up being secretive about which people we’re talking to. Or which conferences we’re going to.
Or if countries don’t talk to each other, even if they have similar aims in diagnosis, and post-diagnostic care and support (including the global dementia friendly communities policy). Or if we don’t share lessons learnt (such as, possibly, the beneficial impact of treating high blood pressure on dementia prevalence in one country).
Or if certain people become figureheads in dementia. But no man is an island.
I still feel that there’s a lot more that unites us than divides us.
Anyway, I’ll leave it to people on the frontline, and in communities, much more able than me, to work out what they want.
Transforming dementia care is long overdue. Specialist clinical nurses in dementia are now vital.
In the G8dementia, particularly by large corporate-like charities, dementia has been compared to the cancers. Whilst there are many problems with this comparison medically, the aim is for research and service expectations to be met in dementia on an equal footing to those for cancer. There are different types of dementia and different types of cancer, and there is, according to NICE, no current treatment for Alzheimer’s disease, the most common type of dementia globally, which slows the progression of disease. The aim however is undeniably a laudable one. In terms of service provision, the hope is that medical conditions can be detected early (and not at the last minute), and over time care and support can be introduced and implemented in a non-panicky way. The low hanging fruit is for providers at the front end of the service to game the NHS QOF/CQUIN system to design ‘innovative’ packages which might diagnose certain forms of dementia, such as the profound short term learning and memory problems in early Alzheimer’s disease. But getting out of this ‘quick fix’ mentality is going to be essential for the long-term sustainability of dementia services in England I feel. I believe strongly that clinical nursing specialists would not just be a big help here: they are indeed vital. England will really benefit from senior people in dementia taking the bull by the horns, in keeping with a refreshing approach to the long term conditions (LTCs) in general, as helpfully described by the King’s Fund in this policy pamphlet from 2010.
But I have now spoken to two very senior specialist clinical nurses in the NHS. One who has been at the heart of policy for nursing in the last few years, and the other one who has been at the heart of one of the top clinical firms in cognitive disorders here in London for a few decades. They both said exactly the same thing to me: “What we’re fed up about is the fast turnover of services and personnel within them. It’s difficult to find the same person twice. And we’ve got too many people signposting services, and not enough people providing frontline care.” There is undoubtedly a rôle for a trained person who can help to navigate a person with dementia and his or her caregivers around a profoundly complicated system. I’ve heard that “dementia advisers” can be brilliant at a local level, but can easily come to the limits of the skills they can sometimes offer. The system is too bitty and disorganised at the moment; and persons with dementia (some of whom who become ‘experts by experience) and caregivers have a key rôle in optimising design of service and revision provision for dementia in the future.
As a person progresses along “a dementia journey”, a term itself which attracts some considerable criticism, his or her own needs will tend to change from living well independently with dementia to benefiting from increasing levels of support, and then increasing levels of care. Two big events could happen along this ‘journey': the loss of decision-making ability (mental capacity), and the preference to move into a residential home of sorts. The timing of these events can be very hard for people with dementia or their caregivers to predict. There can also be worsening problems in communication between people with dementia and those closest to them, including friends and family. If a person living with dementia needs suddenly to enter hospital as a ‘crisis’ at 4 in the morning, he or she might be blue-lighted in with an infected full bladder causing a deterioration in cognition and behaviour, without a care plan in sight.
Diagnosing dementia is clearly not enough, but a timely diagnosis can be helpful. Professional physicians, nurses and other staff will always consider their professional including moral obligations in how likely the diagnosis is, how much a person wants the diagnosis, and how much to investigate a possible diagnosis. And there are too many cases of the possible diagnosis being given in a busy clinic, often summarised as an ‘information pack'; at worst, some people lost to the system for years before anything new happens.
It is likely that England will develop ‘integrated care organisations’. This does not involve building new departments and new buildings, but is a shift in organisational mindset such that GPs with a specialist skill in dementia service provision can work alongside other trained professionals and caregivers, with the person with dementia. This ‘working together’ is nothing new. It has been brilliantly described in the policy work of the Carers’ Trust in their recent documents ‘A triangle of care’ and ‘A road less rocky’. Caregiving can be intensely rewarding, but can also be hard work with caregivers having specific needs of their own. Caregivers will also be at the very heart of any personalised care plans. A professional who might be involved is a speech and language therapist. There is a national shortage of experienced speech and language therapists which is a tragedy as some forms of dementia, for example logopenic primary progressive aphasia, might be characterised by substantial problems in language in the relative absence of problems in domains such as episodic memory.
As a dementia progresses, a clinical psychologist will be in a brilliant position to work out why a person might have practical problems in real life due to identifiable problems in thinking, such as planning. A planning problem might be manifest as a person being able to make a cup of tea, or to organise a planning trip. Or, a clinical psychologist will be able to tell a team that what appeared to be an optician-related matter with eyesight is in fact a higher order perceptual problem as found in the rarer posterior cortical atrophy type of dementia (where memory can be normal early on.) An occupational therapist can use his or her own expertise here. Whichever way you look at it, dementia service provision needs are likely to be met from clinical teams who are an integral part of the ‘dementia friendly community’, who have been somewhat disenfranchised out of the conversation so far compared to high-street customer-facing corporates. Professionals, even in the context of meeting their regulatory obligations, have, I feel, a massive rôle to play in providing personal communities even if they do not assume legal duty of care. It is now known that activities can not only enhance wellbeing, but can also possibly slow the rate of progression (although the evidence base for this finding is not particularly robust yet.)
In the last few years, since the Health and Social Care Act (2012), was introduced, there has been massive turmoil in the National Health Service (NHS), leading at worst to fragmented services resulting from slick pitches from well funded private providers unable to deliver on their contracts. And yet if the NHS were given the correct management and leadership skills, they could be at the heart of providing world class care in dementia. Economies of scale, with free knowledge transfer, can be advantages of large organisations. Given that there are a million people in the next few years living with dementia, the NHS should be planning ahead for this, not just counting the number of new diagnoses as a manifestation of glorified bean-counting. The drive to diagnosis has been a classic example of where the target has become the means to an end in itself.
Earlier this year in July 2014, it was reported that cancer care in the NHS could be privatised for the first time in the health service’s biggest ever outsourcing of services worth over £1.2bn. The four CCGs were involved, which care for 767,000 patients, are also seeking bidders for a separate £535m contract to provide end-of-life care. Whoever wins the cancer contract will then have to “transform the provision of cancer care in Staffordshire and Stoke”. The prime provider will “manage all the services along existing cancer care pathways” for the first two years after which “the provider will assume responsibility for the provision of cancer care, in expectation of streamlining the service model”, according to details posted by the CCGs on the main NHS procurement website.
Macmillan Cancer Support were able to bring clinical nursing specialists (CNS) to the table: the “Macmillan nurses”. This robust model, which had proper financial backing, has proven to work extremely well in the cancer setting (some details are here). A massive contribution of the CNS is widely thought has been thought to be the “proctive case management”, and not only is this is sound clinical sense but could in the long run save the NHS millions, averting emergency hospital admissions which have been pre-empted. The case for proactive case management has also been established in other neurological conditions such as multiple sclerosis. CNS have been described well for the community, but also have a rôle to play in hospitals. Indeed, continuity of care between the community and hospital will be vital, not least because people living with dementia can find unfamiliar people and physical environments extremely distressing. Warrington has seen the introduction of designs which put people living with dementia at ease and the valuing of specialist trained staff. The service provision there is a beacon of success, and shows what can be done if the NHS has a vision and motivation to succeed in this.
CNS could have been a pivotal component of the answer given to Lorely Burt, Liberal Democrat MP for Solihull, this week to the Prime Minister in the weekly PMQs. But it sadly was not.
Clinical nursing specialists, including the well respected “Admiral nurses” from the ‘Dementia UK’ charity, have been recognised as being crucial to developing world class care in dementia too here from our own English nursing strategy. Over 4o00 have signed a petition for more Admiral nurses on the internet. A much under-reported item of research from the Centre for Innovation and Leadership in the Health Sciences at the University of Southampton, established improved clinical outcomes and significant return on investment from CNS in dementia. Again, work in progress suggests that the proactive case management approach has a lot to offer here. A paper from Prof Steve Iliffe and Prof Jill Manthorpe and colleagues is particularly noteworthy here. The beneficial impact of CNS in averting emergency admissions is being well described for cancer by Prof Alison Leary, Chair of Healthcare and Workforce Modelling, and colleagues (see, for example, here). If in the next five-year English dementia strategy there is a strong commitment to flagship clinical integrated services with well established and respected clinical nursing specialist models implemented, this could really revolutionise dementia service provision. And it’s now becoming increasingly that commonalities in what works well, especially in relation to involving caregivers, is working across a number of LTCs. This is a golden opportunity for senior policy specialists in dementia to put the emphasis on sustainable models of care rather than shiny box gimmicks, and to design a system which will be of real benefit to patients with dementia and their closest ones.
