By Race Equality Foundation (November 2013)
In a new briefing paper, produced as part of the Race Equality Foundation’s Better Health collection, David Trustwell argues that a more targeted approach for black and minority ethnic people with dementia and their carers is essential. Highlighting an innovative pathway approach to living well with dementia, Trustwell suggests using ‘community dementia navigators’, befrienders who provide support to people living with dementia and help them to find their way around the health and social care system. Furthermore, by providing improved training in cultural competency amongst professionals across the care pathway, people with dementia from black and minority ethnic communities can be supported throughout their diagnosis and treatment. He argues that such an approach would help to tackle rising costs by reducing the rate of transfers to more expensive residential care, and the number of costly unscheduled hospital admissions or transfers to residential care for complex, late presenting black and minority ethnic patients who have been living with undiagnosed dementia needs.