Primary Care Dementia Nurse SpecialistNHS

South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust

London, SE1 8EL Permanent £58,133 to £65,261

Posted 11 September 2026 Closing date 23 September 2026

London Waterloo East Rail Station (0.3 miles, direct) Southwark Underground Station (0.3 miles, direct) Victoria Station (1.8 miles, direct)

Job summary

The Dementia Clinical Nurse Specialist service in Southwark provides comprehensive clinical holistic assessment, review, and support for people, and their carers, who are living with a diagnosis of dementia. The nurse led service primarily offer home based assessments to support planning of care for people living with dementia in the community to stay living at home.

To achieve this, we work closely with primary care, social care, and voluntary sector organisations in the borough to foster positive networks and co-working across the borough. Building and strengthening these relationships is a key part of this role, and this is done through network meetings, MDTs, and co-location of services.

Alongside this; using knowledge as specialist nurses we promote health and wellness, as well as giving dementia education to other health professionals, social care, and voluntary organisations. We provide expert clinical guidance to our partner organisations and consult as required.

South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust currently has two Dementia CNS services, based in Lewisham and Southwark, and the services work closely to ensure a parity of care and access across the two boroughs. The provision is very small so the two are joined and have shared meetings on the Lewisham site.

Main duties of the job

Undertake holistic clinical assessment of individuals living with dementia, provide expert advice and support to these individuals, whilst maintaining a small short-term caseload of patients with dementia who may need follow up visits to achieve desired outcomes.
To work with health, social, and voluntary services, and engage with the wider Southwark community, to develop and maintain working relationships and cohesive care pathways across the borough for the defined patient group.
To give expert advice, training and community engagement on dementia. This will relate to general overview of dementia, living and living well with a diagnosis, and best practice. The aim of this engagement is to upskill professionals coming into contact with those who are living with dementia, as well as wider impact education for family and carers of those living with dementia outside of direct clinical assessment.

Job description

Key Responsibilities (Clinical):

To undertake direct patient care at least 70% of working hours. To practice at an advanced level, demonstrating a high level of autonomy and clinical decision making.
The post holder will liaise proactively with external organisations to provide and promote seamless patient-centred care.
Identify safeguarding concerns and report via agreed channels and seek advice through the safeguarding leadership structure
To develop a detailed knowledge of services and agencies in the borough which can support people with dementia with a range of needs and effectively signpost patients, carers and GPs to these services and build professional links.
To work alongside the voluntary sector organisations to provide expert clinical advice and guidance where there are concerns for their attendees and the services lack clinical expertise or direct access to this.
To ensure that appropriate, consistent and realistic information is provided to patients and relatives.
To provide support to carers of people with dementia
To adhere with clinical care pathways for patients with dementia.

2) Practice and Service Development:

To act as a clinical dementia expert to primary care , supporting GP practice nurses and others with practical advice, signposting to relevant community services. To actively involve service users in providing feedback of their experience of the current service and suggestions for improvements.

3) Education and Training

To educate professionals in Southwark on the range of services available for people with dementia and effective care planning, through carrying out joint work and feeding back actions from reviews
To attend meetings and conferences, locally and nationally to maintain own specialist knowledge ensuring that the post holder is fully conversant with current issues.
To participate in the training and education of nursing, medical and AHP staff within the Trust and Primary Care as required.

4) Quality Improvement and Service Evaluation

To collect and present high quality data on the effectiveness of the service.
To collect key outcome measures including rates of completed care planning for people with dementia, referral and re-referral rates, and patient experience and carer experience data.

5) Other

To undertake any other reasonable duties as requested by line manager.

About us

By coming to work at SLaM, you will join an organisation with a rich history and international reputation in mental health care, with access to professional development and the chance to work alongside world leaders in their field. Our close working relationship with King's Health Partners also opens up opportunities to get involved in academic research.

We're committed to a healthy work-life balance and ensuring our staff feel valued, with a comprehensive benefits package including:

Generous pay, pensions and leave, dependent on role and length of service
Flexible working, including part-time and job share options
Career development, through mentoring, coaching, and leadership and talent programmes
Car lease schemes at competitive rates
NHS discounts of up to 10% with major retailers

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