Dementia Post Diagnostic Support Service in East Lothian

Award of contract. East Lothian Council on behalf of East Lothian Health and Social Care Partnership, has a requirement for a suitably experienced and qualified provider for the provision of Dementia Post Diagnostic Support (PDS) to meet the requirements of Scotland’s National Dementia Strategy, for anyone who has been newly diagnosed with dementia.

We have a statutory duty to deliver the Scottish Government’s commitment that everyone newly diagnosed with dementia is entitled to be offered a minimum of a year’s worth of post diagnostic support, coordinated by an appropriately trained and named Link Worker. The provision of the statutory Post Diagnostic Support will form one part of our wider post diagnostic support pathway aimed at enabling the person and carers to understand and adjust to the diagnosis, connect better and navigate through services as well as plan for future care. The service provider will be a key partner in informing and planning of services for individuals across the whole pathway, working with people with lived experience, their carers, third sector and community partners to deliver innovation in dementia care and support, provided locally across East Lothian.

The service will require to operate flexibly across East Lothian and be integrated within NHS Lothian’s Primary Care and Older Adult Community Mental Health Services to ensure post diagnostic support is available at the point of diagnosis. Link Workers will be required to operate at the Enhanced Dementia Practice Level as defined within the Promoting Excellence Framework and deliver PDS in accordance with the National Dementia Strategy. If the individual does not move to the care-coordination phase, they should be able to access their named link worker again, whether within the year previously stipulated or not. The service will also be required to provide continuous data reporting to ELHSCP on national PDS indicators.

Provision of PDS should be equitable across East Lothian, including for those individuals living in remote and rural areas. Support should be provided primarily "face to face" but can be delivered digitally in preference with individual wishes of people accessing the service. Additional information: Economic operators may be excluded from this competition if they are in any of the situations referred to in regulation 58 of the Public Contracts (Scotland) Regulations 2015.