Standards of Care for Dementia in Scotland: Action to support the change programme, Scotland's National Dementia Strategy

Glossary

Advocacy: independent advocacy is a way to help people have a stronger voice and to have as much control as possible over their own lives. It empowers people who need a stronger voice by enabling them to express their own needs, secure their rights and make their own decisions.

Advance care planning: promotes discussion between people diagnosed with dementia, those close to them and those who provide care with respect to their future health, personal or practical aspects of care.

Anticipatory care plan is the document produced in relation to advance care planning.

Antipsychotic drug: a drug used to alleviate the symptoms of a psychotic illness.

Care planning: planning to provide services and supports to meet the outcomes a person wants to achieve ,in order to meet their assessed need.

Carer: someone who spends a significant proportion of their life providing unpaid support to family or friends.

Carer's assessment: the purpose of a carer's assessment is to discuss with social services the help a carer needs with caring as well as any help that would maintain the carer's own health and balance caring with other aspects of life such as work and family commitments.

Capacity to make decisions: the ability of someone over the age of 16 years to make a specific decision in a given situation.

Community: a group of people living in a particular local area or residential setting.

Delirium: a sudden state of severe confusion and rapid change in brain function.

Diagnosis: identification of an illness or health problem by means of its signs and symptoms.

Direct payment: money given to an individual, by a council, to pay for services and supports which he or she has been assessed as needing. It provides the person who uses services or, in certain circumstances, the carer with more choice and control over care received.

End of life: the last phase of a person's life, from the point at which it has become clear that the person is in a progressive decline.

Independent: in relation to people with dementia is often associated with continuing to live in their own home, but people with dementia can continue to be independent wherever they are living and in a variety of ways.

Life story: an account of the series of events making up a person's life and the people important to them.

Outcome: at an individual level, this means the impact or end results of supports and/or treatment on a person's life.

Palliative care: an approach that improves the quality of life of people and their family facing problems associated with life threatening illness through prevention and relief of suffering.

Person-centred: putting both person who uses services at the centre of their support, care and treatment. Ensuring everything that is done is based on what is important to the person from their own perspective.

Policy: high-level statement of intent and objectives within an organisation.

Procedure: the steps taken to fulfil a policy.

Psychoactive medication: a medication that effects brain function such as an anti-depressant or drug to help manage anxiety.

Risk assessment: identifying risks to and from an activity and assessing the potential impact of each risk.

Risk management: identifying, assessing, controlling, monitoring, reviewing and auditing risk.

Scrutiny bodies:SCSWIS and HIS are the public bodies charged with improving the quality of social care, social work, children's services and healthcare services. They are also charged with providing more streamlined and better co-ordinated scrutiny of service quality.

Self directed support: an overarching term for a number of different approaches to give people in need of care services greater levels of control over how their support needs are met.

Standards: the minimum acceptable level of performance, or the level of performance that is generally accepted.

Telecare and assistive technology: provides a range of options such as alarms, sensors and communication aids to help support people.