New dementia strategy for Scotland: Everyone's Story

Connecting to a Wider Policy Landscape

Dementia affects a whole person and the people around them, so this strategy has to connect and align with other policies and frameworks together with relevant legislation. This includes but is not limited to:

• “20 minute” Neighbourhoods
• Age, Home and Community
• Care and Wellbeing Portfolio
• National Carers Strategy , Carers (Scotland) Act 2016 and other carer legislation and policy
• Creating Hope Together: suicide prevention action plan 2022 to 2025
• Health and Social Care: Data Strategy
• Development of the National Care Service (NCS)
• Digital Health and Care Strategy
• Getting it Right for Everyone (GIRFE)
• Housing to 2040
• Learning/intellectual disability and autism: transformation plan
• Mental Health and Wellbeing Strategy
• My Health, My Care, My Home, the new Framework for Care Homes
• National Planning Framework (NPF) 4
• Neurological Care & Support: Framework for Action 2020-2025
• Palliative and End of Life Care Strategy
• A Scotland for the Future: opportunities and challenges of Scotland’s changing population strategy
• Public Health policy
• Rehabilitation Strategy
• Review of Housing for Varying Needs
• Scott Review - Scottish Mental Health Law Review
• See Hear Strategy
• Self-Directed Support (SDS)
• The Scottish Intercollegiate Guidelines Network (SIGN) Guidelines (To be published in later in 2023.)
• The national Social Isolation and Loneliness Strategy: Recovering our Connections 2023 to 2026
• The Older People’s Framework: A Fairer Scotland for Older People: framework for action
• The values and outcomes of Scotland’s National Performance Framework
• National Transport Strategy
• Women’s Health Plan

Willy’s Story

Click Here for Willy’s Story

We are people who still have a zest for life, we still laugh, we still take joy in things.

Since being diagnosed a year ago I have become involved with peer-to-peer support groups, and believe that people living with brain disease have an important role to play in supporting others in the same situation. Whilst carers and professionals can be well informed and well meaning, they cannot know what it is like to be diagnosed with a disease around which there is still much misunderstanding and stigma.

I have tried through making a series of YouTube videos, through starting a podcast and using social media to shine a light on some of these issues, through the prism of my own experience. I feel something of an obligation to use the professional skills I accrued whilst working as a journalist to help further people’s knowledge about dementia, and to challenge some of the commonly held misconceptions. Luckily I am at an early stage of illness, so am able to do this – but others at a later stage need to have their voices heard too. I’m interested in ways that could be developed to help them.