Over the years we have seen many requests for additional specialist dementia nursing support across health and social care. Dementia care remains one of our biggest societal challenges, affecting so many across the UK.
Dementia is the leading cause of death in the UK, and one in two of us will be affected by the condition – either developing it ourselves or caring for someone who does.
“People with dementia, their families, the workforce, and the system all face a wide range of challenges and pressures”
Getting dementia care right is of pivotal importance for those living with the condition, their families and supporters, as well as our professional workforce.
It’s timely then, that we have seen another recommendation, this time from the Care Quality Commission (CQC), in recognition of the need for specialist nursing support.
I agree with this of course, and at Dementia UK we see first-hand the impact that Admiral Nurses have in creating a more clinically confident, person-centered, and quality-driven workforce.
It seems that dementia care still lags behind other long-term conditions when it comes to recognising the need for specialist nursing, and disparities and inequities remain.
In dementia care, as in many areas, the impact of specialist nurses can greatly improve situations for all concerned. In our own work, where we have Admiral Nurses either embedded within social care providers or working alongside them, the difference it makes can be significant.
We frequently hear how much the social care professional workforce (I still refuse to use the term care workers) gets from working with Admiral Nurses.
From everyday best practice advice, supporting clinical case complexity right through to the more formal transfer of knowledge and education, the impact can be keenly felt and much more importantly evidenced.
Our Admiral Nurse Transitions of Care Service, hosted by Livewell Southwest in Western Devon, has seen a significant reduction in avoidable readmissions to hospital, with no avoidable readmissions from an audit of 320 people living with dementia who were supported by the service.
Another recently published impact report from Dementia Oxfordshire highlighted how our Admiral Nurse within the service has worked with over 20 different health and social care teams across the service, and 96% of health and social care professionals who were surveyed agreed that “having the services of an Admiral Nurse in Oxfordshire is vital for increasing recognition of the health and social care needs of people who are living with dementia and social care needs of people who are living with dementia.”
The support of Admiral Nurses in social and community care is not just felt by the workforce. It makes a difference for people with dementia and their families too.
Penny, a carer who had the support of an Admiral Nurse, told us: “It would have made such a difference to have had an Admiral Nurse from the beginning. There isn’t anything else out there that offers that support when you need it in the moment.”
Dementia UK has nearly 480 Admiral Nurses working in various settings across the UK. We have plans in place to grow this number, but the need, as outlined in the recent CQC report, is pressing and one that rightly deserves more attention.
Even nursing itself can be a bit slow to recognise the scale and the gravity of the issue, and this becomes even more confounded with ever-decreasing and limited resources.
We know that carers and families often feel confused about the support on offer to them. In 2023, only 53% of people who know or knew someone with a diagnosis of dementia said they were aware of ‘all or most of the types of support’ available to them.
Disjointed post-diagnostic care, often as a result of a lack of funding, is compounding issues caused by an already stretched workforce.
Throughout my career I have seen that when problems and needs aren’t addressed, they build up. People with dementia, their families, the workforce, and the system all face a wide range of challenges and pressures.
More help from specialist nurses, delivered in a timely way, can ease this. We’ve seen this work have an impact in other condition areas, why should it be any less important in dementia care.
Paul Edwards is chief nursing officer, Dementia UK
