Joint publication: Dementia - Supporting people with dementia and their carers in health and social care

SCIE / NICE Dementia video case study

Social Care Institute of Excellence (SCIE) feature on dementia, exploring the effective implementation of the SCIE / NICE Dementia guidelines.

The short film was featured on NICE TV throughout the 2008 National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE) Conference. SCIE’s film aims to highlight the importance of social and health care working together to help people with dementia better manage their condition.

SCIE/NICE Dementia case study video transcript

Reporter: “The Social Care Institute For Excellence – known as SCIE - estimates there are seven hundred thousand people in the UK with dementia, supported by more than a million carers. Dementia is a complex and challenging, progressive condition which, experts say, calls for an integrated approach from both health and social care services.”

Amanda Edwards, Deputy Chief Executive, Social Care Institute for Excellence: “SCIE is the organisation responsible for advancing good practice in social care. The work we do is all based in best available knowledge and evidence drawn from a range of sources, research, good practice examples, views of people who use services and their carers and we produce a variety of resources designed to help people make better decisions and improve the quality of care that’s provided.”

Reporter’s voiceover: Windslow House in Gloucestershire is a residential home that works closely with Gloucestershire County Council and Primary Care Trust. It’s a good example of the integrated approach to training and delivering services that SCIE recommended jointly with NICE - the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence.

Amanda: “People with dementia and their carers consistently tell us how important it is that health and social services work together as one service and that’s why we produced the joint guidelines with NICE on dementia care so people providing those services were working to the same set of guidelines.

Angela Willis, Workforce Commissioning and Partnerships Manager, Gloucestershire County Council: “We reviewed best practice and one of the first things we identified was the SCIE NICE guidance and we were able to integrate it into all our training education pathways, into all the training for dementia to ensure that we were meeting best practice guidance.”

Reporter’s voiceover: The guidelines take a holistic approach to dementia, looking at the whole person rather than the condition. They suggest all staff working with older people in the health, social care and voluntary sectors should have access to dementia care training. SCIE’s new dementia website helps carers to widen their knowledge interactively. The site is intended to be a key implementation tool for the new national dementia strategy. Gloucestershire County Council and Primary Care Trust have developed an integrated health and social care training programme to help care workers identify and support people with dementia.

Susan Kean, Dementia education nurse: “Dementia care training is vital and I think it’s based on training being made accessible to staff in care homes, that’s based on a relationship between health and social care staff and identifying our champions, those are our dementia link workers who will make it sustainable and share what they’ve learnt with their colleagues to take good practice forwards, absolutely imperative.”

Reporter’s voiceover: SCIE stresses the importance of social care services in helping older members of our community live healthy lives – and is committed to working closely with health care colleagues to enable those with dementia to manage their condition.

Helen Bown, Joint Commissioning Manager, Older People’s Services, Gloucestershire PCT and Gloucestershire County Council: “It’s well worth NHS and health authority managers getting together to deliver joint training. It make a difference, it allows staff to have access to NHS knowledge and skills to support them to do their job better, which gives better outcomes for older people and better outcomes for their carers.”

Reporter’s voiceover: Withthe number of cases of dementia predicted to rise by over 30 per cent in the next 15 years, SCIE is asking all health and social care organisations to use the best available evidence and practice, to help people make informed decisions about their future care.

Download the guide

This guide is available in PDF format. The following documents relate to the guide:

Guideline

Implementing this guideline

Printed copies

For printed copies of the quick reference guide or the Understanding NICE-SCIE guidance, phone the NHS Response Line on 0870 1555 455 and quote: N1 144 for the quick reference guide and N1 145 for 'Understanding NICE-SCIE guidance'.