Health services delivery

Designing and delivering award-winning memory assessment service

Service: Brighton and Hove Memory Assessment Service (MAS)

Partners: We are head contract holder working in partnership with Sussex Partnership NHS Foundation Trust and the Brighton and Hove Carers Centre. We also work in alliance with the Alzheimer’s Society.

Reach: Brighton and Hove population – c276K*
*2021 Office for National Statistics mid-year population estimates

Our innovative dementia service

Unlike other memory assessment services, we offer support from the point of referral to all. We provide a dedicated worker to proactively support each person in the service, starting with ‘what matters to you’ conversations and providing care navigation, social prescribing, and dementia-specific pre- and post-diagnostic support that includes Dementia Care Planning.

Operating as an integrated clinical and support community service, we measure our performance with a Local Quality Requirement (LQR) metric that measures people’s quality of life using the QOL-AD framework. We call this our ‘How Are You?’ questionnaire.

Brighton and Hove MAS impacts

100%

of patients felt staff treated them with compassion, respect and dignity

623

‘What Matters To You’ conversations were had from July – September 2024

83.3%

of people who use our service tell us that they are maintaining or even improving their quality of life after being referred to us

(previously 73%)

At Brighton and Hove MAS, we pride ourselves on being a service that cares. We care about our patients and what is important to them, and tailor our service to meet those needs. The results of this can be seen in 100% of our patients reporting that they were treated with compassion, dignity and respect.

Samantha Stevens

Integrated Care Manager at Brighton and Hove Memory Assessment Service

Feedback for our service

South Asian man sat talking to a clinician in a medial consultation room

I just want to express my eternal thanks for the help, support and understanding that I receive each time I contact the Memory Assessment Service. As a Nurse in a Dementia Nursing Home, I am fully aware that this is not always so positive for others when they try to access services within the NHS. It always feels that my concerns are shared and responded to in such a positive, empathetic manner from all concerned.

I feel like the sun has come out as I have support and access to information. I refuse to be afraid and feel that having information and support gives me the possibility to feel safer and get on with my life.

I always feel better after our telephone calls. You go above and beyond to provide support, and you really care. You live for your jobs and it really shows.

Thank you for your kind, gentle approach to Mum’s telephone assessment. Your caring manner put her at ease. This was a huge step for mum to make, and you made it as comfortable as possible.

How we deliver dementia services

Since the system redesign that took place in 2017, we have operated as an integrated clinical and support community service. This brings together clinicians from both secondary care (Dementia specialist nurses and consultant psychiatrists) and primary care (GP’s with Extended Roles), along with our Memory Support Workers, to deliver a holistic and personalised service to patients and their loved ones.

Every member of the team at the Brighton and Hove Memory Assessment Service, from our administrative staff to our clinicians, works towards a shared purpose which is ensuring that our patients and their loved ones receive the information and support needed to live their lives well.

We understand how having problems with memory and functioning of the brain can affect everyone in different ways and can be frightening when the cause of this is unknown. We aim to provide a service that takes away some of the stress and fear of these situations by treating everyone as an individual.

The service also has links with a wide range of other services across the city, including psycho-social services, information and advice services for areas such as financial benefits and legal matters, Adult Social Care, other clinical services including the Bladder and Bowel Service and Community Physiotherapy and carers support services.

This helps us support patients to navigate the local system that can be relatively complex and daunting.

Meet Elspeth, a Brighton and Hove Memory Assessment Service (MAS) patient, talk about her experiences of being diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease: