5B National Vision, Strategies, Policies and Actions for Dementia in England [Update 5 - 16.12.13]

Viewers in Indonesia, South Korea, Ukraine, USA and other places overseas might like to note that these Posts are about a small town in Kent (a county in England). This series of rolling Posts is, therefore, about dementia 'governance' in England* only, but with particular reference to changes coming about in Swanley over the coming months and years. This is a result of an initiative to encourage the town to become a more dementia friendly community (see Post 1).

Although France's national dementia strategy was about eight years earlier than England's, over the last four years England's national vision, strategies and policies for dementia have been formulated and their implementation has begun.  Just a few are included in the list below:

• "A National Dementia Strategy - Living well with dementia" (3 February 2009)
• the National Dementia Declaration (October 2010)
• the National Dementia Action Alliance (2010)
• A policy of upgrading of care settings for those with dementia is funded by £50m - for hospitals, and care and homes (see Profile No 1)
• the Dementia Friends initiative and the Dementia Friends Champions initiative (see Post 6)
• the Dementia Friendly Communities initiative (see Post 4)
• the Dementia Friendly Pledge for businesses and other organisations 
• 'Making a Difference in Dementia Nursing Vision and Strategy'
• The G8 Summit (Decemeber 2013) agreed cooperation and the enhancement of funds for research into dementia.   

Each of these will be described briefly in later Posts together with a rolling account of their local impact in Swanley. 

At the moment there are a growing number of dementia friendly communities in Kent, eg Northfleet, Dartford, Eastry, West Malling, and Westgate. In due course KCC aims to have 12 such settlements - but it is likely that as a result of the three 'pilot' communities many others will be initiated.

Footnotes:

 1  For  the record, Swanley is administered by a 'town council', within the administration of Sevenoaks District Council, which in turn is within the administration of Kent County Council.

2   However, Swanley is in the area of Dartford, Gravesham and Swanley Clinical Commissioning Groups.  

*[ Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales are likely to have similar and different policies, etc but the institutional bodies formulating and implementing are probably different in each country.]