Editorial

DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1108/17556228200900001
Date18 May 2009
Published date18 May 2009
Pages2-2
AuthorChristina Pond
Subject MatterHealth & social care
2
Editorial
February saw the publication of the long awaited national
dementia strategy Living Well with Dementia. The strategy
has been in development for over 12 months and has
been widely consulted on with key stakeholders from
all sectors.
This strategy provides a strategic framework for five
years within which local services can:
deliver quality improvements to dementia services
and address health inequalities relating to dementia
provide advice and guidance, and support for health
and social care commissioners and providers in the
planning, development and monitoring of services.
It also provides guidance with regard to the content of
high-quality services for dementia.
The strategy aims to deliver significant improvements
in three areas of dementia services: improving awareness,
earlier diagnosis and intervention, and providing a higher
quality of care. Recent research shows that there are
currently 700,000 people in the UK with dementia and
the cost to the UK economy is £17 billion a year. Over the
next 30 years, the number of sufferers will double and the
costs will treble. The document stresses the importance of
local implementation and details 17 key objectives.
Of these, a number present specific issues with regard
to workforce develop ment. Increased awa reness and
improved communication skills to provide early diagnosis,
appropriate intervention and good quality information
will present a challenge for all staff but specifically the
requirement to provide the following will no doubt result
in a range of training and practice issues:
improved community personal support services
improved quality of care for people with dementia in
general hospitals
improved intermediate care for people with dementia
improved support for people with dementia in care
homes.
Objective 13 specifically describes the need for an informed
and effective workforce for people with dementia to be
developed and this offers an opportunity not only for
the development of staff working in practice settings but
also for specialist staff working in this demanding field of
mental health services to share their expertise.
This edition of the Journal presents a number of papers
that offer insight into different approaches to training and
practice. Stacey and Cole describe the development of an
educational intervention, using a problem-based learning
approach, to address the need to integrate the principles
of infection control practice within the context of mental
health nursing, while the paper by Woodward, Jones and
Martin describes the positive impact of training graduate
primary care mental health workers to work with people
with a diagnosis of personality disorder.
This issue also presen ts papers t hat provide an
exploration of the involveme nt and engagement of
service users within a developmental and practice context.
Rogers, as a former service user, draws on his experience
to make the case for the value of alternative psychological
therapies, other than CBT, and a more unified approach
to mental health therapy. The PINE project described by
Stickley et al presents a model for service user participation
in the development.
It is undo ubtedly in such area s of workf orce
development , service d esign a nd delivery involv ing
service users, that mental health services are best placed to
share their expertise with other care providers in support
of the implementation of the dementia strategy, as it will
only be through a genuine partnership between service
providers, users and carers that the aspirations of the
strategy will be realised.
Full details o f the s trategy a re conta ined on the
Depart ment of Hea lth w ebsite : htt p://www.dh. gov.
u k / e n / P u b l i c a t i o n s a n d s t a t i s t i c s / P u b l i c a t i o n s /
PublicationsPolicyAndGuidance/DH_094058 (accessed April
2009).
Christina Pond
Executive Director of Standards and Qualifications and Health Policy Development, Skills for Health
The Journal of Mental Health Training, Education and Practice Volume 4 Issue 1 March 200 © Pavilion Journals (Brighton) Ltd

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