It's pretty rare for us Community Care journos to praise rather than bury the government in our blogs, but I'm willing to break a habit in the case of the draft dementia strategy published last week.

It seemed to exemplify what policymaking should be about:

• Take a problem (and in this case it's a big one, with the number of people with dementia set to rise from 570,000 to 1.4m over the next 30 years).
• Diagnose what's wrong - something that has been laid bare in a string of reports over the past two years by, among others, the Alzheimer's Society, the National Audit Office and Commission for Social Care Inspection. For instance: Just 30% of people receive a diagnosis by some estimates and those who do often receive it late or at times of crisis; an erroneous belief, particularly in primary care that nothing can be done for people with dementia; a lack of early intervention and insufficient support for carers leading to people being fast-tracked into residential care; many care home residents not having their  mental health needs met or receiving particularly personalised care.
• Propose some specific, evidence-based and detailed solutions and be prepared to invest in them.

I was particularly surprised - at a time when growth in public spending has been cut back for 2008-11 and public borrowing is mounting - that the draft includes a costed proposal. This is to invest over £200m annually in an early diagnosis and intervention service in every area, which promises to over time reduce demand for residential care and improve quality of life for people with dementia.

Care services minister Ivan Lewis was even prepared to say that the full dementia strategy, published in October, would receive extra funding and the Department of Health would provide adequate "levers" to implement it.

This may perhaps be me being naive but it does seem that politics - in the worst sense of the word - has not interfered particularly with the drawing up of this draft strategy, which is as it should be with an issue of such importance.

Perhaps that comes from giving leadership of it to two people who are outside the civil service - Adass vice-president Jenny Owen and the Institute of Psychiatry Professor Sube Banerjee - as well as inviting strong input from the Alzheimer's Society.

Nevertheless it is too soon to be singing the DH's praises too heartily - we need to see how the consultation on the draft strategy develops and what comes out in October.

But so far so good.

Read the complete post at http://www.communitycare.co.uk/blogs/social-work-blog/2008/06/dementia-strategy-means-busine.html