Dementia Support Line
iSPACE and the Dementia Friendly Practices Assessment and Benchmarking Tool
This is a initiative from 2014-2017 was designed to help staff teams in GP surgeries who are supporting people with dementia.
Safer Provision and Care Excellence (SPACE)
iSPACE was a quality improvement and innovation programme that aimed to better manage the pathway of patients with dementia and their carers through primary care by:
- Helping staff in GP surgeries recognise that people with dementia need personalised care plans and access to resources to help them and their carers live better with dementia.
- Supporting more people with dementia live in their own homes for longer, in dementia friendly communities.
The iSPACE model of dementia friendly primary care was developed from a hospital-based dementia care model and drew on the work of Alzheimer's Society, Dementia-Friendly Communities and Dementia Friends.
What happened
Practices in the Wessex area began to complete the steps identified by iSPACE to become dementia friendly.
Focus groups with people affected by dementia at individual surgeries helped staff understand the impact of the changes. These discussions highlighted what was working well and what still required improvement, while Dementia Champions shares learnings and good practice between surgeries.
Practices were keen to build on this progress by continuing to make improvements and by adopting successful approaches. They also expressed a desire for clearer guidance on what being ‘dementia-friendly’ means, in order to ensure a consistent approach across all practices.
Assessment and benchmarking tool
The Assessment and Benchmarking tool was introduced as a more systematic way to measure improvement, complementing the original iSPACE work. You can find a blank version of the iSPACE benchmarking assessment tool here.
The results
Dementia Friendly surgeries summary report
At the time of reporting, 50% of primary care services in Wessex have completed the steps the become dementia friendly, including 150 GP surgeries.
2,969 surgery staff have received dementia training at the tier one awareness level, and a further 244 people have received talks about dementia and the iSPACE programme.
Over 15,000 people living with dementia have been impacted by these improvements.
As a result of iSPACE recommendations, surgeries now have:
- Dementia Friendly signage
- Local service information leaflets
- Dementia care planning documents
- Trained staff
- Increased diagnosis rates
- Better engagement with carers
What changed for people with dementia
- People with dementia have better experience of GP appointments: they miss fewer appointments, have longer appointments where they needed them, and have less need of appointments than previously.
- More people with dementia attend for dementia reviews and had care plans.
- More carers are registered, more carers receive health checks and carer health is improved.
- People with dementia have fewer inappropriate admissions to hospital.
Development began with consultation between the iSPACE leaders and practices that had taken part. It also considered external initiatives such as Dementia Friends and Dementia Friendly Communities.
This led to a draft version of the tool being consulted on in Kent, Sussex and Surrey with the Clinical Network, primary care providers, people with dementia and carers. The prototype tool was tested at some of the sites taking part in the later stages of the iSPACE project.
The tool is used by an assessor during a practice visit to help assess whether a practice is Dementia Friendly.
After the tool has been used to assess what's happening in the practice, the assessor has a follow-up meeting with practice staff to discuss: