Local Care Home pleased with service to help people living with dementia
As the care sector endures ever increasing pressure to respond to the COVID crisis, care home professionals across Warwickshire have welcomed a new service as ‘invaluable support and a listening ear at the time of greatest need’.
Louise Spann, home manager of WCS Care’s Four Ways care home, Leamington Spa, said
“One of our resident’s lives with dementia and also has cancer. The combination of this experience of pain and dementia means that she can become upset with staff and other residents without warning which has become worse during the pandem-ic. We spoke to Dementia Support UK and explored the resident’s current care ar-rangements and we agreed that these were responsive to her needs but we also discussed new approaches to try around personal care and pain relief. There has already been an improvement. I’d definitely use the service again. It was really effi-cient and it’s always beneficial to get a new perspective
Lockdown and isolation from family members have seen a detrimental effect on the health and wellbeing of people living with dementia and urgent support has been provided by Dementia Support UK from HammondCare, which is funded by Innovate UK
The service provides free access to immediate support and expert guidance for relatives, carers and health professionals to help carers cope with behaviours and symptoms which have worsened during the pandemic.
Executive Director of the National Care Forum, Vic Rayner, said:
“Care homes have been hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic and this service offers them valuable support to help them. Dementia care is a highly specialist area of care and ensuring the consistent delivery of person-centred care within a global pandemic is paramount. Carers are doing an incredible job in difficult circumstances and this new service will allow care homes free access to expertise from specialist colleagues to support the continued delivery of high-quality care across the country.”
While many care homes have specialist staff, they are taking the opportunity to have a detailed peer-to-peer discussion and examine new approaches to support their residents. The consultants on the end of the phone from Dementia Support UK are working with care home teams to provide personal and tailored, non-pharmacological support telephone consultations and follow up video conferencing.
Staff from care homes, relatives, GPs and other social and health care professionals who are working with a resident living with dementia and would like to access further help and support can make an enquiry online 24/7 at dementiasupportuk.org.
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NOTES TO EDITORS
Dementia Support UK: Connect, Consult, is a new service adapted from a tried and tested and innovative approach developed in Australia through a programme led by the Dementia Centre, HammondCare. Since the start of that programme in 2016 the partnership has supported over 25,000 people with dementia in care homes, domestic homes and hospitals.
HammondCare: HammondCare focuses on research, evaluation, education and consultancy. Our service called Dementia Support UK: Connect, Consult uses this expertise and our experience of our parent company in Australia to provide practical support for care homes during the current pandemic.
HammondCare: provides health, aged and dementia care expertise that empowers the people that we serve. HammondCare is an independent Christian charity.
A KPMG analysis of the Australian service, completed in 2019, reported that the model achieved significant reduction in clinical symptoms without recourse to antipsychotic medication and there was significant reduction in carer stress.
KPMG’s economic analysis revealed there were savings to downstream health service utilisation, including hospitalisations.
