Dementia Action Week — House of Commons, 2021-05-27
Topic: Health
Elizabeth Louise Kendall (Labour, Centre-left): Dementia affects the lives of hundreds of thousands of people in this country: not only the 850,000 people who currently have the condition, but thousands more of their family and friends, as I am sure many of us in this House know. It is the leading cause of death in England, and the only condition in the top 10 causes of death for which there is currently no known treatment or cure. Our ageing population means that the number of people with dementia is set to increase to 2 million by 2050, with the cost of caring for dementia more than doubling to almost £60 billion a year Over the past 15 months, people with dementia and their families have suffered perhaps more than anyone else because of covid-19. A quarter of all deaths from this awful virus have been among those with dementia, predominantly because of the tragedy in our care homes. Tens of thousands more have seen their condition deteriorate, and families have been pushed to breaking point and banned for more than a year from seeing their loved ones in care homes. Those who look after a relative in their own home have been providing even more care than usual Dealing with this pandemic was always going to be extremely difficult, but the truth is that there has been a higher proportion of deaths in care homes in England than in almost any other country in the developed world. Between 17 March and 15 April last year, 25,000 people were discharged from hospital to care homes without a covid-19 test, despite clear evidence of the virus sweeping through care homes in Italy, America and France Care providers and trade unions warned the Government about the lack of testing and PPE. The Prime Minister was personally warned about those issues by my hon. Friend the Member for Hove (Peter Kyle) in Prime Minister’s questions on 25 March. I myself wrote to the Health Secretary about these issues on 8 April Despite all that, the official guidance on testing before discharge to care homes did not change until 16 April last year, almost a month after we all went into national lockdown. We do not need Mr Cummings to tell us that the rhetoric about putting a protective shield around care homes was complete nonsense; the evidence is there for all to see. The reason this matters—the reason the truth and the facts matter—is that we owe it to people who have lost their loved ones with dementia, to those who are still being prevented from having normal visits to care homes and to all the staff in care homes who have been to hell and back. We have to learn the lessons from what has happened to make sure these terrible mistakes never happen again If we want to build a better country as we emerge from covid-19 and meet the challenges of this century of ageing, then the needs of people with dementia must move to the top of the agenda. That starts with dementia research, because ultimately our goal must be to prevent, treat and ultimately cure this often heartbreaking condition. The rapid development of treatments and vaccines for covid-19 has shown us the amazing things our scientists can achieve when they are backed by political will and underpinned with the right resources and partnerships. Ministers now need to apply the same approach to dementia research In their 2019 manifesto, the Government promised to double funding for dementia research and speed up progress in clinical trials. When will they deliver on that commitment? Over the past decade, huge progress has been made in imaging, artificial intelligence, genetics and drug development, and that has brought us to a tipping point in dementia research, which the UK is extremely well placed to capitalise on because of our diverse academic research base, funded by the public, private and charitable sectors, and because of the strong foundations in clinical research provided by the NHS. Ministers need to seize this opportunity to give dementia research a greater priority and turn the UK into a world leader in clinical trials, so that patients here can be among the first to benefit from improved treatments The second issue Ministers need to grasp is transforming support for families. That should happen across the entire health and care system, but perhaps nowhere more so than in dementia care. Dementia gradually erodes your ability to think, communicate and even move. It destroys your memory, gradually taking away what makes you, you. That is what makes it so very painful for the people who live with dementia and the people who love them When someone has dementia or Alzheimer’s, their family is their memory. No matter how amazing NHS or care workers are, they cannot know the foods the person likes, the films they used to watch or the songs they like to sing. That is one of the reasons why so many people in care homes have gone downhill so fast without regular family visits. The bottom line is that we cannot provide good-quality dementia care without putting families centre stage Our health and care services need to do far more to identify people who help care for someone with dementia, get them better information and advice and make sure that services are far more joined up, so that people do not have to tell their story to lots of different people in lots of different parts of the system. The Government need to properly fund breaks for family carers, so that they can put their own needs first, at least for a while, and fund other initiatives, such as the amazing support group for carers run by the Alzheimer’s Society in Sefton, who I met recently. They are just absolutely phenomenal and a lovely bunch of people. I believe that Ministers need to change the law to enshrine the rights of care home residents to have family visits, so that the terrible situation facing hundreds of thousands of families over the past 15 months never happens again The final point I want to make is on the urgent need for the Government to make good on their promises to reform social care, because while dementia is not yet curable, our broken care system definitely is. For all that the Minister has said, the truth is that when the virus struck, our care system was far weaker than it ever should have been after a decade of cuts, taking £8 billion out of the care system at a time of growing demand. Two years ago, the Prime Minister stood on the steps of Downing Street and promised to fix the crisis in social care "with a plan we have prepared", yet still these reforms are nowhere to be seen. If there is one thing, just one thing, that comes out of this awful pandemic, it must be a long-term plan that gives social care the priority it needs and deserves, and secures a sustainable funding base for the future Labour is calling for a 10-year plan of investment and reform to transform support for older and disabled people, including those with dementia, as part of a much wider ambition to make Britain the best country in which to grow old. In the century of ageing, we understand that social care is as much a part of our infrastructure as the roads and railways. If we neglect our country’s physical infrastructure, we get roads full of potholes and buckling bridges, which prevent our economy from functioning properly. The same is true if we fail to invest in our social infrastructure. Without a properly paid and trained care workforce, vacancy and turnover rates soar, fewer people get the support they need and families end up taking the strain President Biden gets that, which is why he has made home care a central plank of his post-pandemic infrastructure plan. Britain deserves that level of ambition too. In the century of ageing, everyone should look forward to getting older with confidence, not fear. Labour Members stand ready to play our part in making that happen, but it is time for the Government to act.