The consultation on the dementia strategy is well worth reading, I think. Many of the stories in the national press focused on the pledge to review the use of anti-psychotic drugs, particularly in care homes, but the proposals really do appear to imply a wholesale overhaul of dementia care. A few that immediately hit you are:

• Investing over £200m a year to set up an early diagnosis and intervention service - with new multidisciplinary teams (including doctors, nurses, care managers and psychologists) handling diagnosis, providing information and direct care, and extra capacity for adult social care and community mental health teams to deal with knock-on referrals.
• Dementia care advisers to help people and their families navigate the system.
• Much more support from community mental health teams for both care homes and general hospitals. Specialist mental health assessments and reviews for all care home residents alongside ongoing support from teams.
• All care homes to be registered to provide dementia.
• A basic level of training for all people who work with people with dementia, across health and social care, with new national training standards.

If implemented, it would make quite a bit of difference, but I guess it remains to be seen whether the government has the courage to carry this through, all of which will be revealed by the final strategy.

 I haven't read through it but thanks for the highlights! Maybe I'll have a read on my journey to work! Obviously more money for early diagnosis and intervention seems like A Good Thing. 

Care Advisers - not really sure what that's about - sounds a bit like the kind of thing we're doing in our team anyway as we focus a fair bit on education about dementia and its course and pattern - those who come through our team in any case. 

Additional support in Care Homes seems to be positive - as does training. It's hard to argue against those points actually! There must be some catches somewhere. 

All care homes to be registered for dementia. Not at all sure about that. I think I'll have a look through to see what thats about. Its quite a blanket provision. 

I'll be back again when I've seen some of the proposals!