The establishment of a Cognitive Stimulation Therapy group in Carlow/Kilkenny.

This poster explores the development of a community based Cognitive Stimulation Therapy (CST) programme across Carlow/ Kilkenny for service users of three distinct services which needed to integrate for this purpose. Furthermore, it will analyse how this development occurred using specific pillars of the International Foundation of Integrated Care (IFIC), namely shared vision and values, system wide governance and leadership and workforce capacity and capability. The three services are a new Integrated Care Programme Older Persons (ICPOP) team, an established Memory Assessment Clinic (MAC) and the Alzheimer’s Society of Ireland (ASI) Dementia Advisors caseload. The ICPOP and MAC services both being HSE services and the ASI being a third sector organisation (TSO). A working group consisting of CST facilitators (mixed backgrounds of OT, nursing and occupational therapy assistant) and clinical management was developed to ensure shared governance. Terms of reference and standard operating procedure, including means to evaluate were developed and agreed. We came together with the shared vision to pool our resources and target newly diagnosed people with mild to moderate Dementia who would benefit from this evidence based intervention. Through integration we were reaching a wider target group, while also sharing the workload, increasing our capacity for intervention and ensuring a sustainable service. Over the past year this has proven to be an efficient way of working, running four rolling 10 week programmes. Following on from the success we have more facilitators being trained for 2024 to start running the groups simultaneously across the two counties as referrals to the service have increased and we are reacting to meet this demand. This project identifies that the resources to establish this CST group were within each service, however it was only a sustainable option when the services integrated. The success of innovative practice where we integrated not just between HSE services but cross sector with the ASI is also motivating for future developments in integrated care. The continued success of small local projects such as this could be a way forward to embed integrated care in practice in Ireland.