Health, Great Britain Department Of

This guidance is aimed at care trust and local authority chief executives, directors of adult and children's social services and communication leads and is intended to assist councils with social services responsibilities in making direct payments. It applies to children's and adult services and replaces the 2003 guidance, and reflects legislative changes that extend direct payments to previously excluded groups.

This a template action plan can be used by local authorities and commissioning consortia working together under Health and Well-being Boards to improve care for those people with dementia who live in their own homes or in some other residential setting.

In July 2008 the Department of Health published the End of Life Care Strategy - promoting high quality care for all adults at the end of life. This second annual report sets out the continuing progress in implementing the strategy, highlights the need for further work and identifies the action intended for this coming year. The report details the progress made in improving standards of end of life care in England over the past year.

Guide for users and carers which aims to sign-post key long-term care and support services. Lists services available from local authorities and the NHS and explains possible charges and social security benefits, including special help in winter. Outlines charter standards and complaints procedures.

This strategy identifies the actions that the UK Government plans take over the next four years to ensure the best possible outcomes for carers and those they support. Over the summer of 2010, the Department of Health sought views on what these priorities should be. Over 750 responses were received, representing the views of over 4,000 carers. These views are summarised in an Annex and quotes from respondents are included in the strategy.

The Essence of Care benchmarks are a tool to help healthcare practitioners take a patient-focused and structured approach to sharing and comparing practice. There are 12 benchmarks in total. This document provides the benchmarks for pain, so that people and carers experience individualized, timely and supportive care that anticipates, recognizes and manages pain and optimizes function and quality of life.

The End of Life Care Strategy was published in July 2008. This is the first annual progress report on the strategy. It describes progress at national and regional level with illustrations of the work taking place locally. Contents include: meeting the challenges of end of life care; death, dying and society; the end of life care pathway; care in different settings; support for carers and families; the end of life care workforce; measurement and research in end of life care; making change happen.

A short guide explores personalisation in relation to carers. It brings together key practice point and examples which illustrate how the principles of personalisation can be applied successfully when working with carers.

People with dementia and their carers need a range of services, some of which will be dementia- specific and others which will be more mainstream in nature, but which may deliver services to large numbers of people affected by dementia. In some instances, these mainstream services may not respond well to the specific needs of people living with dementia and the purpose of this document is to provide a statement of requirements to meet those needs.

The Changing Workforce Programme has been set up to promote new ways of working which will both improve patient care and be more attractive to staff.   “New ways of working” covers a variety of approaches to job redesign:  new roles may be created or existing roles may be adjusted to include additional responsibilities. These new or changed roles will probably cross traditional demarcations:  between individual professions, between registered and support staff, between clinical and non-clinical staff and between health and social care.