The London Social Care Partnership (formerly the Joint Improvement Partnership) has been established to help shape the future of adult social care in London, providing support and capability to deliver improved quality and value.

Sponsored by the London Association of Directors of Adult Social Services, the LSCP builds collaborative action across all 33 London borough councils with a wide range of partner organisations and agencies.

The LSCP has established a Dementia Commissioner Network to support a strategic, co-ordinated approach to commissioning across health and social care.  The Network meets quarterly to tackle key issues faced by commissioners, and share best practice and real examples of innovative dementia commissioning where services have already been redesigned.

Throughout 2013/14 the key issues being addressed by the network include:

1. How do we ensure effective day care services that meet the needs of dementia sufferers and their carers?
2. What are the benefits of a ‘shared lives’ scheme for those with dementia, and how can this be rolled out in boroughs?
3. How can assistive technology be used effectively by commissioners to support people with dementia in London?
4. What outcomes should commissioners use to clearly define local improvements in dementia care?
5. How can the new dementia prevalence calculator – released in Feburary 2013 – be used in commissioning planning?
6. How will commissioners meet the Prime Minister’s Dementia Challenge?
7. Reviewing best practice in dementia friendly accommodation and the models for alternatives to care homes.
8. Determining the most effective support for people as they receive earlier diagnosis.

The network is leading a project to establish a training package tailored to those working in London with dementia suffers to maximise wellbeing and independent living. This will enable people to stay living in their own home for as long as possible, and avoid crisis admissions to acute hospital beds.

The project will:

• focus on boroughs that have little/no dementia training available to care homes and/or carers, to maximise impact and avoid duplication of effort in boroughs where training is already available;
• develop and deliver the training programme, with input from clinicians, patients, and carers groups; and
• include a quality assurance ‘kitemarking’ scheme, which will be a means of understanding the level of training received by care homes and can be made a specific requirement in future care home contracts.  We will also work with MyHealthLondon to ensure the ‘kitemark’ becomes a quality marker on their care homes portal.

The network also plans to produce a training guidance tool for local commissioners, focusing on training for family members; carers; and domiciliary, residential and nursing care providers.  This will be co-produced with stakeholders in order to ensure that it provides appropriate targeted support.