New dementia strategy for Scotland: Everyone's Story

Enabling Delivery

Governance

For any strategy to be delivered, it requires commitment and shared responsibility from all relevant partners. This is our ‘call to arms’ along with effective and transparent structures for decision making with clear lines of accountability that develop trust and enable ongoing improvement.

The governance structures that have been created to support the development of this strategy have been instrumental in:

• Informing the strategy from a broad base ranging from lived experience to service planners; professional perspectives to policy makers and academia
• Shaping the strategy through a series of detailed round table and follow up 1:1 discussions where knowledge and experience was shared and commitments made to ensure both were reflected in the strategy
• Reviewing, commenting on and contributing to an iterative strategy development process.

In addition, the Scottish Government commissioned an independent research review of evidence delivered by University of Stirling’s Dementia Services Development Centre (DSDC). This independent evidence has both informed this strategy and will continue to inform delivery plans throughout its implementation.

This inclusive approach to governance and governance structures should continue to meet to agree and oversee its delivery. The strategy will also need to call on a broad base of knowledge and expertise as it is delivered. A series of focussed, multi-disciplinary groups will help identify what priorities are included in delivery plans and support their implementation.

All priorities and associated areas of work should be agreed by the governance groups within the following structures, including plans for monitoring and reporting.

Minister for Social Care, Mental Wellbeing and Sport

Lived Experience Panel

Practitioner Advisory Forum

COSLA Health and Social Care board

Strategy Delivery Group

Academic Advisory Forum

Short-term Delivery Groups

supported by short life multi-disciplinary delivery groups focussed on specific action areas and reporting back to above.

Evidence, data collection and analysis

To design and deliver the right support for people living with dementia and their care partners/unpaid carers, we need access to the latest available data and evidence. Access to updated data and evidence, from government, public bodies and academia, focussed in the right areas, will develop our shared understanding of dementia in Scotland. This will allow us to more effectively assess the extent to which our support is targeted in the right areas and is responding to the additional barriers being faced by particular groups and drive forward improvements in support.

For data, this will include quantitative and qualitative evidence covering areas such as:

• How many people are living with dementia in Scotland now, including the type/types of dementia
• How many people have a formal diagnosis
• Number of people under 65 years receiving a diagnosis
• How many people are accessing high quality post diagnostic support, the length of time they receive support and how long they wait from referral to receiving support
• The outcomes it delivers for people and their care partners/unpaid carers, captured by embedding the Healthcare Improvement Scotland (HIS) led Single Quality Question for post diagnostic support (PDS) into service evaluation methods
• The number of people with a learning disability and neurodivergent people diagnosed and receiving dementia-specific support
• Number of unpaid care partners of people living with dementia, the support they receive and the outcome support delivers
• Protected characteristics breakdown
• Housing circumstances such as number of people living with dementia in supported, extra care or sheltered housing; adaptations accessed.

For evidence, we will develop better connections to the lessons from the latest academic literature on dementia and agree ways to proactively identify and share innovation in practice that can support delivery.

It will be for the dementia governance groups to inform, commission and receive reporting on data collection and evidence, actively connecting to the Data Strategy for Health and Social Care, that can be used to assess performance and impact.