The South West Dementia Workforce Network held another highly successful meeting on the 17th March 2011 at Taunton Rugby Football Club. Attendance was very high and there was a mixture of people, organisations and sectors from across the region including health, social care, voluntary sector, private and independent sectors, workforce funding provider and Skills for Care.

There was a very informative session where the members gave an update on key areas of progress within their areas and they each highlighted key issues and ‘hot topics’ which were returned to at the end of the day with Community Planning and Dementia Care Mapping discussed and other topics considered for future meetings.

Dr Leah Jones gave a very interesting presentation on ‘Educational interventions to improve diagnosis and management of dementia in Primary Care‘.

Tina Kukstas of Dementia Training Solutions followed with a presentation and discussion around the work of Gloucestershire with Dementia Link Workers and the resources used to support them. She then discussed the development of new dementia workbooks and bite sized presentations based on material developed in Gloucestershire that have been adapted as a free, open and accessible resource. This material is available on this website.

Tina has written the workbooks in conjunction with an advisory group and the workbooks have been consulted on with a group of volunteers from the Dementia Workforce network and others. The workbooks are based on a 3 step approach with step 1 ‘Essential dementia awareness‘ and step 2 ‘Further knowledge in dementia‘.

Tina also explored with the group topics they feel would be useful for step 3. The aim of the step 3 workbook is to give learners opportunity to gain greater depth of knowledge on certain topics. The group offered an extensive list and they then voted on priority topics.

Rebecca Hardwick of South West Development Centre showed the group how the new workforce development section of the website and discussed the extensive range of learning resources which are available in the learning library.

Diane Bardsley gave a presentation and discussed the developments of the new Learning Platform which is being developed by Tribal Consortia in partnership across the region. Find out more here.

Diane also discussed a dementia workforce commissioning guidance document that is currently being written and members were able to offer suggestions of topics to be included. This commissioning guidance document will be available by May on this website.

Members filled out evaluation forms which were very positive with 68% were extremely glad they came. Best things about the day included: ‘hearing from a wide range of people in different work contexts’, ‘sharing ideas to communicate to commissioners’, ‘the 2 workbooks’, ‘listening to people and finding out what they are doing’, ‘Leah Jones talking about primary care’, ‘SWDP website developments’ and ‘idea generation’ and ‘partnership working’.

The next network meeting will be held during May. This network is open to anyone involved in dementia workforce developments from all sectors. The meetings are held bi-monthly and are facilitated by South West Development Centre on behalf of the South West Dementia Partnership. Members are encouraged to send agenda items and topics for discussion.

For further information contact Diane Bardsley diane.bardsley@swdc.org.uk or to join the group please contact Faye Brazier faye.brazier@swdc.org.uk.