Assessment

The team can work alongside other teams and organisations to provide interventions to aid recovery.

People who use this service will be living with the following conditions:

• Alzheimer's disease
• Dementia
• Fronto-temporal
• Lewy body
• Vascular
• Other related memory conditions.

They may also have:

• Anxiety
• Behavioural/Psychological symptoms of dementia (agitation, aggression)
• Depression
• Obsessional thoughts
• Personality changes
• Psychosis - hallucinations, delusions (perceptual issues / false beliefs)
• Suicidal thoughts.

Once somebody has been referred to the Great Yarmouth and Waveney Older People's Community Service a clinician may initially contact them by telephone to confirm:

• They would like to be assessed
• Whether they could access our clinic service or need to be seen at home.

The clinician may also gather a little extra information that may help with their assessment and be able to prioritise the urgency.

The person will then, for memory treatment, receive an appointment in the post.

Once in the clinic, they will see a specialist clinician, who will take the history of their concerns and do a test of their memory. The person may or may not be given a diagnosis at this time; sometimes more information needs to be gathered and further assessments undertaken.

Our team like people to have a loved one, close friend or relation with them to help with information and history details.

If somebody is referred for other mental health issues, the relevant clinician will contact them, often by phone, to arrange an appointment. Often this takes place in the home, but we do have Nurse Prescribers in the team who will be looking at offering some clinic appointments.