Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment his Department has made of the potential merits of embedding specialist dementia Admiral Nurses within neighbourhood health teams.

Neighbourhood Health Services will bring together teams of professionals, including nurses, doctors, social care workers, pharmacists, health visitors, and more, closer to people’s homes, to work together to provide comprehensive care in the community.

We expect neighbourhood teams and services to be designed in a way that reflects the specific needs of local populations. While the focus on personalised, coordinated care will be consistent, this will mean services will look different in rural communities, coastal towns, and deprived inner cities.

The provision of dementia health care services is the responsibility of local integrated care boards (ICBs). We would expect ICBs to commission services, which may include dementia specialist nurses or admiral nurses, based on local population needs, taking account of the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence’s (NICE) guidelines. NICE recommends providing people living with dementia with a single named health or social care professional who is responsible for coordinating their care.

We are intending to publish a National Framework for Neighbourhood Health Plans in the autumn. This will set-out how areas should design neighbourhood health services around local needs and different patient cohorts.