Dementia Somerset is an informal partnership between:
- Somerset County Council
- Somerset Clinical Commissioning Group
- Alzheimer’s Society
- Somerset NHS Partnership Foundation Trust
The vision in Somerset is for people with dementia and their family and carers to be helped to live well and improve the quality of their life, no matter what the stage of their illness or where they are in the health and social care system. Somerset has developed a joint Somerset Dementia Strategy and has detailed plans to support its implementation. NHS Somerset has identified dementia as one of its key World Class Commissioning health outcomes, with a focus on working with GPs to increase the identification of people with dementia through the Qualities and Outcomes Framework.
Somerset is a predominantly rural county with pockets of deprivation, mainly in the towns, but also in some rural areas, particularly in West Somerset, and this presents issues relating to access to services especially for older people, and those on low incomes. Somerset has much higher levels of people aged 50 and over than the UK as a whole.
