Dementia Day Care Matters

Day care is an essential part of Scotland’s dementia care infrastructure, but it is not a statutory service. This means it is vulnerable to funding cuts, local decision-making regarding provision, and inequalities like access and charges. However, growing evidence suggests that day care has significant benefits for people with dementia and their family carers, supporting people to remain living at home and avoid unnecessary hospital or care home admissions. This project sought to understand how registered day care services in Scotland meet the advancing needs of people with dementia and to identify areas for service improvement.

The findings show that day care should be seen as the heart of community-based dementia care. The project reviewed current provision of registered adult and dementia day care in Scotland. Desk-based research mapped day care services, costs and charges, referral patterns, and policies. Service specifications and Regulator inspection reports were analysed to understand excellence in dementia day care. A review of international research literature distilled outcomes and models of day care. One-to-one interviews and group discussions explored the views of people with dementia who attend day care, their family carers, and the day care workforce. Commissioners contributed to a roundtable discussion to understand what lies ahead for day care. An expert panel deliberated on the implementation of Scotland’s national dementia care guidelines in day care, developed by the Scottish Intercollegiate Guidelines Network (SIGN168; SIGN, 2023). From this, recommendations for improvement and a consensus statement were developed.

The project was funded by Alzheimer Scotland and developed in co-production with the dementia community, including members of the Scottish Dementia Working Group and the National Dementia Carers Action Network. Ethical approval was granted by the University of the West of Scotland.