Late last year Care Services Minister Paul Burstow publically announced that reducing the level of antipsychotic prescribing to people with the dementia was a national priority and tasked SHAs with bringing greater drive to this work in order to deliver significant reductions in 2011.

NHS London's Medical Directorate has initiated an exciting programme of work to tackle this agenda, with a team of dedicated clinicians leading the work across all sectors of care. Our aims are as follows:

1. Developing clinical leadership for dementia – model of cross-sector clinical leadership in primary, specialist mental health, acute and care sector and across all disciplines
2. Developing dementia networks in each London cluster to improve commissioning and provision (health care, social care, voluntary sector)
3. Understanding London current practice and service provision, through mapping and audit
4. Improving dementia commissioning through supporting commissioning leadership and development of structures to improve dementia commissioning in Clusters and GP consortia (please see our first output, the London Dementia Needs Assessment 2011 - link in the yellow box on this page)
5. Identifying necessary resources to secure improvements and developing or facilitating the development of these resources when needed
6. Spreading good practice – ensuring clinicians, commissioners and other key parties have access to exemplar models through London Dementia Resources portal (please see link in yellow box on this page - please note resources will be added as they become available)

To find out more about this project please contact Jen Watt, Project Manager.