• Christine Lewington
• Guardian Professional, Thursday 3 January 2013 08.35 GMT

In social care commissioning many of us have been haunted by the graphs of doom; the forecasted reductions in spending set against the rising number of older people with complex conditions, a great number of whom will have dementia.

In Warwickshire alone there are 7,100 people living with dementia – a figure that is expected to rise by 34% by 2021.

We believe there can be a positive future for people with dementia, but only if we shape it now and help people to help themselves and family members earlier on.

Like the national dementia strategy, our local strategy emphasises the need for better understanding of the condition. Despite the plethora of information and sources, carers and people with dementia continue to tell us that they find it difficult to navigate their way through the system or that services are too often working in silos.

In Warwickshire we came up with the simple idea of bringing everything and everyone together in one online place – a dementia portal – so that people with dementia, their carers, the wider public, and health and social care professionals could easily find local and national information.

Rather than drown people in information or duplicating what voluntary sector partners do well, we wanted to keep the portal simple. This was about providing key pieces of good-quality information, in a short and concise style and to provide people with links to the best sources for more detail.

Feedback from local carers and people with dementia is that this staged approach helps them navigate a very complex system of health and social care.

We encountered challenges from the start. We were asked why we were investing in technology that might not be used by the older population – although we estimate that there are some 42,000 over-65-year-olds accessing information online in Warwickshire, a number that is expected to grow. We also know that trusted online information can play a tremendous role in self-help for people who receive an early diagnosis of dementia and for those who may be concerned about someone else.

We were also asked if we were in danger of reinventing the wheel when information existed nationally, for instance via the Alzheimer’s Society. But we wanted to have a range of information in one place accessible to all stakeholder groups – those with dementia, people who support them, the wider public, and professionals and practitioners working the dementia care.

We also wanted the information to be localised so people could search for all local services near them.

One of the most powerful and useful pieces of work that we completed with people with dementia and their carers was putting together a short guide to the top 10 things that people can do following a diagnosis. These are intended to help them to come to terms with their diagnosis and support them to live well with dementia.

While the portal has been created for less than £10k, it has required co-operation, commitment and time from other agencies. During our work to ensure the portal contained the best quality and up-to-date information and advice, we developed even stronger partnership working with agencies from across Coventry and Warwickshire. These partnerships are already being capitalised on for our next project, which is testing the use of iPads in residential care settings and will also be vital for the wider delivery and success of our dementia strategy in future.

The portal was commended during Prime Minister’s Questions on 19 December:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/social-care-network/