The Fife Dementia Strategy: 2010 – 2020 - The Knowledge Network

Bield Flexicare
Is a specialist service designed to meet the needs of older people with
dementia living at home who would benefit from getting support to
maintain daily living skills, support their lifestyle choices and be involved in
accessing their local community. It also provides support to the carers of
users of the service. The service is an enabling service to support people
with dementia to maintain the skills required to continue living at home or
in the home of their carer. The service was established in 1991 and now
covers most of Fife. Flexicare receives funding from both the Fife Council
and NHS Fife. The service is needs led and operates 7 days a week, 365
days a year. As the service is built around the individual - it is provided at
a time to meet the needs of the service user and their carer. Service users
are allocated a flexicare worker and partner worker to provide consistency
of care and support for the service user and their carer allowing trusting
relationships to be built.
used to ease the transition into long term care if necessary. The provision of
high-quality and flexible services may also positively impact the lives of people
with dementia in many ways including: promoting and maintaining
independence, supporting carers, reducing social isolation, and preventing
admission to hospitals and care homes 39 .
Currently care at home providers in Fife strive to offer a high quality service to
people who have a range of needs, this include health and social care
services. However, service providers face challenges in responding to the
demand placed upon them as the number of people requiring support at home
continues to increase; this is thought to be leading to the provision of taskfocused
home care which does not meet a number of the basic principles of
care that people, especially those with dementia, need. Services must be able
to work with and apply the principles of flexible person centred care integrated
into a culture of skill maintenance and reablement 40 . In the years to come
there will be an increase in the number of individuals with a learning disability
and dementia as well as alcohol related dementia. Many of these people may
be under the age of 65 and have unique needs which are rarely met by
traditional older persons care services or those for people with a learning
disability. They require more flexible and adaptive services with staff that are
skilled in working with people with such unique and often complex needs.
Care at home services must be comprehensive in their scope and able to
provide the following:
• Carer and service user involvement in decision making processes;
• Staff who have dementia care training;
• Specialist staff with in-depth dementia care training;
• 24 hour intensive support;
39 Commission for Social Care Inspection (2006). Time to Care? The Stationary Office:
London
40 Reablement refers to models of care which support the active process of regaining skills,
confidence and independence. They are generally short-term services with intensive in-put.
50