Dementia Pathway Experiences in Croydon

In May 2022, Healthwatch Croydon was approached by the Alzheimer’s Society to undertake some insight into the use of Dementia Pathway Experiences in Croydon services to inform the new dementia strategy for Croydon. Healthwatch Croydon agreed to undertake three online surveys to understand more about experiences of these services from

• patients who have dementia
• their carers
• friends and family.

The questions were closely aligned to compare the datasets, and Healthwatch Croydon undertook to analysis and presentation of data.  They heard from 19 patients who have dementia, 41 carers and 20 friends and family. There were a number of themes covered across the questions considering different aspects of the pathway from diagnosis, to information and support suggested improvements to services and what it means to be dementia friendly. results by question themes including demographic Appendix A (page 64) shows all the questions and each page references the questions numbers. The data shown in this report has already been shared with the Croydon Dementia Action Alliance (CDAA) and the Dementia and CDAA Steering Group and provide insight for the drafting of the Croydon Dementia Strategy.

Limitations:

• It was hard to reach a large sample of people despite the best efforts of the Alzheimer’s Society to engage with their service users. The length and detail expected by respondents of the survey may have been a barrier to uptake.
• It is a snapshot of services as delivered between September and December 2022, (October for Patients).
• The online methodology gives better responses for some demographics than others and so alternative engagement methods should be applied to ensure good representation in future work of this nature.