Historic Dementia Research For New Zealand

For the first time in New Zealand – Dementia NZ has
commissioned a comprehensive set of recommendations on the
services and resources urgently needed for people living
with dementia and their care partners in the
community.

The report’s scope reflected both the
immediate demand and the projected demand based on
demographic trends. Two key findings were:

• the
  huge gaps we have i.e. many people with a new diagnosis of
  dementia and their whānau are not able to access basic
  support, education and advice about how to manage their
  condition.
• the immediate action needed i.e.
  agreement to fund providers to provide fair and equitable
  services across the whole country.

Alarmingly
the report’s co-author and chair of the NZ Dementia
Foundation, Dr Matthew Croucher, predicts New Zealand’s
dementia population is set to double much faster than
international modelling predicts.

“It’s estimated
70,000 New Zealanders are currently living with dementia.
That’s likely to double in just 15-20 years rather than
the predicted 20-25 year timeframe, and that makes a massive
difference in a health system that’s already at breaking
point.”

Additionally, the report found that whether
or not a person with dementia and their family have access
to good help and support in the first critical year of
living with their diagnosis varies massively depending on
where they live.

Part of the reason for this is that
local community dementia organisations have had to develop
their own programmes depending on resources they have
available rather than a centralised funded approached from
Te Whatu Ora – Health NZ.

Dr Croucher also outlined
the benefit that early intervention and community resources
would have for both the health system and those newly
diagnosed with dementia.

“Statistics and experience
shows that patients who present to hospital with dementia
have far greater risks of complications and side effects,
plus their acute care period can be twice as long as for
non-dementia patients. So if we can get the ‘ambulance’
at the top of the cliff in the form of earlier community
intervention and assistance, it will significantly benefit
the person living with dementia and the public health
system.”

Cont’d…/

The research and report
generated three levels of recommendations ranging from
Core, to Intermediate and ‘Nice to
have’. Key recommendations from each priority level
included:

• Core
  recommendations 
  – national agreement on
  exactly what services must be available to
  everyone;

– agree on how we measure whether
these services are actually being taken up and that they are
working.

• Intermediate
  recommendations
  – everyone should help write a
  personal ‘care plan’ so they know exactly what will be
  done to help them in their unique situation;

–
every whānau and family living with dementia should have a
named ‘navigator’ who they can easily contact for advice
about how to get the right help when
needed.

• ‘Nice to have’
  recommendations
  – a national
  helpline should be set up so that people can access help
  24/7.

A further key recommendation is the
need for service providers to sit down with Māori to design
the specific services that whānau need to cope with mate
wareware (dementia) to address the differences in numbers of
Māori living with mate wareware, different understandings
of what it means, and the challenges for 
Māori,
Pasifika and rural communities that experience much greater
inequality when trying to access community based dementia
services.

Main audiences for the report
are:

• The service providers e.g
  Dementia NZ affiliates, Alzheimer’s NZ member
  organisations and other providers like Presbyterian Support
  etc. For the service providers the review defines what is
  demonstrated to be helpful for people with dementia and
  their families. It also clarifies what isn’t known or what
  isn’t shown to be helpful.
• The referrers
  e.g GPs, hospitals etc. They can
  see that the services and interventions are helpful and that
  referral is justified in a clinical
  sense.
• The people living with dementia and
  their whānau – They can look at the
  findings/conclusions, and ask questions about why they
  haven’t been referred or why they aren’t receiving a
  certain package of care.
• The Funders
  i.e. the government / Te Whatu Ora – they can look
  at the evidence for the interventions reviewed and consider
  supporting the programmes reviewed.

Click here for a link to the
full
report:

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