Question reference: S5W-00956
- Asked by: Anas Sarwar, MSP for Glasgow, Scottish Labour
- Date lodged: 22 June 2016
-
Current status: Answered by Maureen Watt on 6 July 2016
Question
To ask the Scottish Government what its position is on (a) introducing or (b) piloting an initiative similar to the Admiral Nursing Scheme in England for the provision of dementia care.
Answer
The Scottish Government is taking a distinctive and extensive approach to increasing the capacity and capability of nursing and other disciplines to respond to dementia, and as such there are no plans to introduce or pilot the use of admiral nurses in Scotland through the NHS. Since 2011, the Scottish Government has co-funded, in partnership with Alzheimer Scotland, the provision of an Alzheimer Scotland Dementia Nurse Consultant in all territorial boards to help provide strategic leadership on change and improvement in NHS dementia care. This is primarily in acute care but we are looking to extend this role in other settings.
In addition, we have over 600 dementia champions (with recruitment ongoing for a further cohort of around 100) working across Scotland to support healthcare staff who work with people with dementia as well as three Allied Health Professional (AHP) dementia consultants hosted in territorial boards: NHS Lothian, Greater Glasgow and Clyde and Lanarkshire and a National Alzheimer Scotland AHP dementia consultant.
Furthermore, everyone newly diagnosed with dementia in Scotland is entitled to be automatically allocated a trained and named link worker to work with the person with dementia and their family for a minimum of a year. This service offer, underpinned by the national target, is still unique to Scotland.
However, dementia UK is currently working with BUPA to roll forward a partnership to boost the number of admiral nurses across the whole of the UK by 10%. This will include the introduction of the first two admiral nurses in Scotland.