Hawker

In this second of two articles on community mental health nursing in dementia care, John Keady and Trevor Adams review published accounts of the CMHN role in work with people with dementia and their carers, and suggest a way in which the role might develop in future.

Scottish Highlands: Elizabeth Jones reports on a three-year project providing support to carers of people with dementia in remote, scattered communities in the Highlands of Scotland.

In this second of two articles reporting on her research, Jenny Henderson argues that adequate support should be given to carers who wish to care for a person with end-stage dementia at home

Reports on an evaluation of the efforts of the Royal United Hospital (RUH) Bath to improve the support offered to people with dementia and their family carers. The intervention included the recruitment of three part-time dementia coordinators, a seven-day older adult mental health liaison service with nurses and a psychiatrist, additional staff training and an increased emphasis on arts and music in the wards.

Describes how the Lancashire Dementia Research Group (LADRIG) has given people with dementia and their carers an active role in the development of research projects.

The Dementia Advisers Service in Kent and Medway was set up to support people with a confirmed diagnosis of dementia and their carers. The service provides face-to-face contact to people in their own homes, telephone and e-mail advice and support to signpost the person with dementia and their carer to appropriate information and services.

This article reports the evaluation of a 24-week support group for people with recently diagnosed dementia.  The group was evaluated in four ways: transcript analysis of group sessions, interviews with participants and carers about the group at 8 and 20 weeks from the start of the group, rating of the importance of eight therapeutic factors by participants, carers and group leaders, mood scales completed by participants and their carers before the group and at 8 and 20 weeks after it started.  The evaluation suggests that as the group progressed, participants became more positive about usin

Oral care of people with dementia is often undertaken by family carers as much as professional staff in formal care settings. Jill Manthorpe, Roger Watson and Anne Stimpson analyse carers’ experiences and the problems they have encountered.

Mike Howorth, Cathy Riley, Gillian Drummond and John Keady introduce a pioneering scheme in which the NHS employs a person with dementia to lead a support and consultative network for people with dementia and carers.

In the second of two articles, Barbara Pointon analyses the chaos of funding and benefits that rarely seem to help the people they are intended for, and asks again, ‘Whose service is it?’