Alzheimer’s Society – Community Dementia Adviser Service and Activity Groups Support
On this page
- Lead Organisation
Alzheimer’s Society
- Project contacts
Halton Borough Council – Adult Social Care – 0151 907 8306
Halton Carers Centre – 01928 580182
Alzheimer’s Society – Halton Dementia Advisor Service – 0151 420 8010
In Halton, a sustainable and integrated approach is taken to supporting carers, with organisations and agencies from across the place-based partnership, One Halton, working together.
With an ageing population comes a direct impact on the level of caring responsibilities that older people have, with many older people caring for spouses, partners or other loved ones into their later lives.
Halton Borough Council commissions a Dementia Advisor Service through the Alzheimer’s Society. The service forms a community support offer that sits beside clinical pathways.
The service is aimed at people with a diagnosis of dementia, people on a pathway to receiving a diagnosis and their carers. The emphasis on incorporating carers into the offer ensures that they are included in the dementia journey.
A new or anticipated diagnosis can be daunting. The services offers dementia-specific support to help people to understand a diagnosis and cope with the changes that occur as dementia progresses. The personalised help and advice provides an invaluable point of contact for ongoing support. This might mean guidance on the legal aspects of caring, such as Lasting Power of Attorney; advice navigating financial elements such as benefits; or someone just needs a Dementia Advisor to listen to them and answer questions.
While working with people on a case-by-case basis, the service also offers peer support opportunities through support groups which run in both Widnes and Runcorn. They regularly signpost to other groups and activities across the borough, including the Carers Centre, numerous community ‘cafés’ and other social and friendship groups.
- Partners
Halton Carers Centre, Alzheimer’s Society, Age UK – Mid Mersey, Halton Library Service, Later Life and Memory Service (LLAMS) – Merseycare, Hope Dementia Café – weekly at Holy Trinity Church, Catalyst Science and Discovery Museum – monthly dementia café
- Project duration
This is a sustainable long-term offer for carers in Halton as an integral part of the dementia pathway.
- Key beneficiaries
Carers of people with dementia
Alzheimer’s Society – Community Dementia Adviser Service and Activity Groups Support
Why we started this initiative
With the development of memory assessment services and increased dementia diagnosis rates there has been a significant need for ongoing post-diagnostic support which included carers. The Community Dementia Adviser Service was set up to ensure that both the cared for and their carers have ongoing access to specialist dementia information and guidance throughout the whole dementia journey. It adds value to the other carer services in Halton by offering expertise and person-centred support specific to dementia. It forms an important part of the Borough’s dementia pathway.
Our goals
The Community Dementia Adviser Service aims to improve knowledge of dementia, its progression, the legal and financial aspects of a dementia journey and access to further support across the borough. It helps people with dementia to live well for longer, and helps carers to understand and sustain their caring role. These are shared goals with other services and a key aspect of the dementia support offer in Halton is to ensure there is limited duplication. This involves working closely with partners, achieved through the borough’s Dementia Strategy and the multi-agency working group which has oversight of the delivery plan.
How we’re implementing it
Carers are offered support whenever, however and wherever they need it, irrespective of whether they come to the service with those they care for. All carers can access the Community Dementia Advisor service with a completely open door. The adviser works with carer, either alone or alongside those they care for, to create an individualised support and plan to address their needs and concerns. These are met by providing specialist dementia information and connecting them with other organisations who are all working together to support carers in Halton.
As part of regular contract monitoring processes, the service captures referral and throughput figures. These consistently show that carers make up around half of new referrals into the service, tending to come with their loved ones to access the support on offer.
Alzheimer’s Society, as part of their Dementia Advisor Service, regularly consults with its clientele to understand their needs, wants and wishes. In May 2023, in preparation for the borough’s refreshed Dementia Strategy the service worked with its social support group in Widnes to coproduce dementia service outcomes. It considered workforce development, prevention support, ongoing support and fundamental aspect of ‘living well’ with dementia. Carers were part of this work and able to voice their own thoughts on the future of dementia services in the borough.
Carers reported, as part of this work, that the carers assessments they’d accessed were good. A feature of their feedback looked at the lack of understanding of the need for carers involvement and the need for greater flexibility in respect of interactions with GP surgeries.
All responses from this coproduced feedback were shared back with the Dementia Strategy Group and incorporated into the delivery plan of the new dementia strategy. One aspect of carers responses, around carers breaks, was not put into the delivery plan as the Council were already undertaking a review of their social care carers breaks policy.