TThe National Dementia Strategy

The National Dementia Strategy is of particular relevance for care homes. Objective 11 requires care homes to nominate a senior member of staff to take a lead on best practice in dementia care in the home, to ensure that prescription of anti-psychotic medication is kept to a minimum, and to develop and implement a strategy for the home as to how the requirements of the strategy will be achieved. Telos programmes focus on person-centered care as the key way of underpinning the delivery of the strategy.

Telos has developed two approaches to training and development on the strategy. The first is based on an action learning set for senior staff. developed as a result of an earlier seminar run in partnership with the Prosperity Network.The learning set runs over twelve weeks and supports staff in developing and using their leadership skills to develop and embed a person-centered approach in the home. Click here for further details. The learning set can be 'stand-alone' or include on-site support as required.

The second approach is to cover the key issues as part of a day workshop where a learning set approach is impractical. This can be tailored to meet specific requirements. Learning outcomes covered in a day workshop are similar to those covered in the action learning set and include:

Assessing and meeting the mental health needs of residents with dementia and developing best practice on the use of anti-psychotic medication, the NICE guidelines and the recommendations in the strategy through the input of Primary Care, Community Mental Health Teams, Home Treatment services and other specialist resources.
Where are we now? Using the ‘VIPs’ approach developed by the Bradford Dementia Centre, this session identifies ways in which a home can evaluate its progress towards embedding person-centered care.
Person-Centered Care in delivering the requirements of the National Dementia Strategy. How do we know when person-centered care is embedded in the ethos of our Home ? Through taking a strengths based approach to working with people with dementia, this part of the workshop looks at person-centered care planning, the use of individually focused activity programmes, life story work, meeting spiritual needs, etc.
Meeting inspection requirements. This session covers the inspection requirements of the Care Quality Commission, with a particular focus on the Short Observational Framework for Inspection (SOFI) and how this tool is incorporated within the overall inspection framework.
Developing the home strategy. This session focuses on the development of the Home’s own strategy and the development of an achievable action plan.

Implementing the National Dementia Strategy