Abstract

Dementia Compass is a social venture that has worked for the past decade providing resources to support people living with cognitive issues, their carers, and families.With an ageing population, we are seeing an increase in the number of people with a diagnosis of dementia and want to create a sustainable resource to expand our capacity and reach.Dementia is a progressive disease that worsens over time. As it changes, so too does support required to live well with the condition.However, the sort of flexible support that people tell us that they need simply does not exist at the moment. Over the last decade, working with people who have dementia and their families, we have often been told that support available begins too late and is not flexible enough to change with people’s needs creating unnecessary health implications linked to cognitive overload and care burden.We want to change that.That is why we are proposing developing a community-based resource centre. This is not a ‘medical’ facility. It is more like a members’ gym or a hotel, where PLWCI and their families can access adult learning and social engagement along with preventative health and therapy when they need it, day or night.

And, like a gym, it will be paid for by a monthly subscription that is far lower than the costs of part-time and full-time care (at present, fulltime residential care costs around £44,000 each year). We don’t know what these costs will be yet. Part of this project will be working with people living with cognitive issues, their families, health professionals, researchers and leaders in allied fields to work that out.

By having access to a flexible facility, families can reduce these costs. More importantly, people will be able to remain living in their homes for longer, can get 24/7 support that fits their lives, and can engage in activities and learning which research has shown can slow disease progression.

This is innovative because it is an entirely new model for service delivery. We want to prove that there is a market need that is not currently being met. Our hope is that our facility will be a demonstrator model which will encourage other market provision, meeting the growing need. That is why as part of our plans we will work with research bodies to evaluate the effectiveness of what we do for the people we serve.