NSFLTNC

Other key policy areas / campaigns

NATIONAL SERVICE FRAMEWORK FOR LONG-TERM NEUROLOGICAL CONDITIONS

The National Service Framework (NSF) for Long-term Neurological Conditions was published in March 2005. The Association was successful in ensuring that the needs of people with MND were met in the Framework through the inclusion of separate sections within each Quality Requirement that deal with the particular circumstances of people with rapidly progressing conditions.

The NSF is to be implemented over a ten-year time-scale, so the challenge for the Association now is to ensure that those parts of the Framework most beneficial to people affected by MND are implemented sooner rather than later. We are doing this by linking our own existing priorities to the NSF.

Those priorities are:

• A properly coordinated multi-disciplinary support team of Health and Social Care Professionals
• Good quality and timely palliative care
• Appropriate nutritional and respiratory support
• Specialist equipment as soon as it is needed

If local statutory services are able to deliver on all of the above, they will be close to achieving our desired Standards of Care.

Primary Care Trusts (PCTs) will generally be in the lead in implementing the NSF, but local Social Services departments will also be involved.

When will this be effective from - Now to 2015

Concerns – The MND Association is concerned that the NSF lacks teeth, as there are no targets or timescales. It will be down to individual PCTs and social services to implement it and their priorities might be elsewhere.

What we have done – The MND Association successfully lobbied to get rapidly progressing conditions specifically mentioned in the NSF - George Levvy was a member of one of the Government’s Working Groups. Since its publication we have been represented on the Government’s NSF Stakeholder Group which meets quarterly. We have produced a leaflet on the NSF for PCTs/social services and are producing guidance for Branches on using the NSF to influence services locally.