Joint five year strategy for Ealing older adults with mental health problems and younger adults with Dementia

This joint five-year strategy provides the vision, principles, and expected outcomes which supports Ealing's ambition to develop integrated mental health services for older people to optimise their well being and help them remain living in their own homes.

The strategy is the result of consultation and work by the council and health service with older people and carers to find out what they needed and what was important to them.

Ealing established an overarching strategy for older people services called All our Futures 2004/07. Its vision is: "To make Ealing a safe, healthy and enjoyable place to live for older people through the promotion of independence."’

Coming out of the All our Futures 2004/07 strategy the council and health services recognised that there was a need to develop a more focused strategic plan for older adults with mental health problems and younger people with Dementia.

The purpose of this strategy is to facilitate the development of integrated services and an action plan over a five-year period, to meet the current and future needs of older adults with mental health problems and younger adults with Dementia.

The expected outcomes of this strategy are:

developing a modern and comprehensive service to all older people with mental health problems in Ealing
rebalancing the allocation of resources away from more institutional/inpatient models of care and support towards community based services that promote independence and support people to live in their own homes for as long as possible
ensuring that services are culturally appropriate and can meet the needs of all members of the community
developing more comprehensive services for older people with functional mental health problems
improving and developing services for younger people with Dementia

It involves partnerships between all agencies, including non-specialist, to ensure that this client group are included in mainstream agendas and are accessing mainstream services such as housing, day services, home care and respite care.

Read the full joint five year strategy for Ealing older adults with mental health problems and younger adults with Dementia 2006/2010 (word).