Centre of Excellence

The new Centre of Excellence will be a partnership between health and care providers, voluntary organisations, music providers and dementia support organisations.

It will: 

• Test new approaches to embedding music as part of dementia care, gather evidence of cost savings for the NHS, and design new models of care which could be scaled up and spread across England.
• Bring together established provision across wide-spread geographical area, being made up of a spectrum of scale of organisations, with key stakeholders including music providers, local government/policy makers, ICB/ICS commissioners, and evidence/academic partners.​
• Focus on making a real connection to the region/locality and the system change that can be brought about.​
• Be part of a programme of integration with the small grantees, where recipients can exchange learning, best practice and have access to a skills-sharing programme led by the centre acting as a learning hub.​
• Be part of a strategic ambition for NASP of unlocking NHS commissioning of social prescribing through gathering data and evidence, integrating community provision into emerging health systems, maximising the benefits of the legislative framework for NHS Integrated Care Boards to engage with the voluntary, community and cultural sectors and embed social prescribing and community-based care.

This is a unique opportunity to test, embed and scale up interventions which are proven to improve wellbeing for the increasing number of people with dementia, adding significant value to existing health and care systems.

• Seek to build on established digital systems which track referrals and data from NHS partners to VCSE providers. 
• Include a partnership approach VCSE providers of dementia services and arts/ culture organisations. 
• Partnership with high quality and proven music & dementia providers, including provision that focuses on those living with dementia and their carers. 
• Evidence of match funding to ensure joint investment across local, culture and health & social care systems. 
• Commitment from the relevant Community Foundation or other philanthropic leaders within the area to engage and support the project   
• Commitment to achieving - with NASP and RCE Academic Partner - a robust, transferable and scalable business case with economic analysis to enable local health systems to invest in new models of community support for dementia utilising music and maximising local community assets. 
• Plan for findings, evaluation and frameworks are transferrable, have the ability to scale up and spread. 
• Commit to engagement from ICB/ NHSE Business Intelligence and Finance teams to support ICS system impact evaluation and economic return on investment, ideally demonstrating experience of having evaluated social prescribing programmes for wider system value.  
• Demonstrate that the project will directly address existing health inequalities and disparities and ‘level up’ access to support in an area. 
• Evidence of a clear and robust equality, diversity and inclusion strategy/framework, demonstrating a commitment to access and measuring impact on communities. 
• Some level of involvement of people living with dementia or lived experience in the planning of the projects you will fund. This can be formal co-design or informal feedback, depending on the scale.

• Demonstrate integration with social care, especially regards shared data.
• Have a demonstrable commitment to strategic development of social prescribing (eg an ICS Social Prescribing Strategy, or evidence of embedding the NHSE Social Prescribing Maturity Framework) 
• Have an existing strategic commitment to improving dementia care (e.g. within the Integrated Care Strategy)​ including pre-diagnosis referral and care pathways. 
• Evident academic partnership to deliver rigorous evaluation 
• Links to Academic Health Science Networks 
• Active and effective patient/ public engagement networks  
• To lead a community of practice where you connect with organisations at small grants level to share learning and support them to grow. To also engage with NASP Innovation network. 
• Commitment to articulate the value of arts & culture to health commissioners, providers, policy makers and clinicians and embed a system level understanding of the benefits of music to dementia