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Dementia advocacy service

"Helping you to stay in control."

The Dementia Advocacy Service assists people with memory loss and dementia to maintain decision-making control over their lives. This is achieved by providing clients with a professional advocate who acts as a guide in planning for the future and in navigating the often complex care system providing information, support and advocacy when needed.

The service prioritises people in the early stages of dementia who live on their own and have no carer/family or limited contact with family.

The Advocate can assist people in a number of ways including:

• Enabling the client to plan for the future through information and advice regarding powers of attorney, enduring guardianship, advanced care directives etc.
• Providing information and referral for community care and support services, including Alzheimer’s Australia Tasmania, Home and Community Care (HACC), Community Aged Care Packages (CACP), Extended Aged Care in the Home (EACH), respite and other community care providers.
• Maximising client involvement throughout assessment processes e.g. Aged Care Assessment Team (ACAT) assessments, memory clinics, psychogeriatric assessments.
• Ensuring that the client has voice through transitions such as from home to/from acute care and from home or acute care to residential care.
• Advocating on behalf of the client on any issues which arise in the course of their relationship with service providers – community, acute, residential and others.
• Providing community education on the rights of people with memory loss and dementia to a range of stakeholders including care providers, other service providers (e.g. housing, welfare, financial) and community organisations.

Fundamentally, the purpose of the service is to support people with memory loss and dementia to make their own decisions and continue to manage their lives so that they can remain living successfully in the community for as long as possible. Hence the service’s motto is "Helping you to stay in control".

The service started as a Commonwealth Government funded pilot project which ran from October 2006 until the end of March 2008. At the end of the project the Tasmanian Government, through the Home and Community Care Program, provided ongoing funds to continue the service in Southern Tasmania as well as to expand it to cover the North and North West of the state.

You can visit our contacts page to find useful links in the dementia area, and you will also find relevant information in our publications page, including the final report on the Rights of People with Dementia and Advocacy Project.