Dementia services 'in dark ages'

Many dementia services are "very much in the dark ages", according to a senior Liberal Democrat.

Lib Dem chief whip Paul Burstow told ePolitix.com that he had "a number of concerns" about implementing the national dementia strategy.

Speaking ahead of a Westminster Hall debate on Tuesday, the Sutton and Cheam MP said that the government was good at publishing strategies but is "not so good" at delivering them.

He said that dementia diagnosis often comes "incredibly late", with doctors failing to diagnose "because they are either ignorant or unwilling to make the necessary referrals".

"As a consequence of that, the family has struggled with the difficulties that dementia brings far longer than they needed to and earlier support could have both helped the family and that person with dementia enjoy their last few years with more dignity than they otherwise do," he said.

'Unacceptable'

Burstow pointed out that of the 200,000 people in care homes with dementia, about 100,000 of them are "routinely" being prescribed anti-psychotic drugs which they did not need.

"Those drugs cut their lives short, increase the risk of stroke and generally reduce their quality of life," he said.

"I'm not confident we have the services we need to provide dignity yet and certainly in that regard, in care homes, too many people with dementia are treated without any dignity whatsoever."

Speaking during the debate, care minister Ivan Lewis described the inappropriate prescribing of drugs as "entirely unacceptable" and said "we must do everything in our power to put a stop to it".

"We must ensure our recommendations are right but there can be no excuse for the inappropriate prescription of drugs," he said.

He said it was important not to underestimate the impact on the families of dementia patients.

"Unless you have met a family going through this it is very difficult to understand the scale of the trauma [and] anxiety" that the condition presents, he told MPs.

The issue was "about real people in real families in our communities".

"This issue of an ageing society is an issue for a growing number of families in our country," he said.

While care has "got to be customised and tailored around the needs of the individual", he said that "on demand" support was not always a realistic option.

'Pressures'

On funding, Burstow said that he hoped for a system which would "fairly share" costs between the taxpayer and the individual.

"At the moment it is a complete lottery as to whether or not you get all your care costs met through the NHS and precisely how much you have to pay for the care that you are being provided with," he said.

"One of the big drivers" in the debate was demographic changes, such as the ageing population, he said.

And with the number of people with dementia in England expected to double from about 560,000 to "well over a million" in the next 20 years, he pointed out that costs were set to rise to about £35bn for England alone.

"So there are huge cost pressures here that need to be met and that's why doing something now, indeed, doing something in the past, is absolutely essential.

"It's also why it can't just be about investing in services to support and deal with the problem, it also has to be about investing in research."

While many of the government's proposals were "very welcome", he said that the current strategy was based on a National Audit Office report from last year, which echoed the findings of an Audit Commission report eight years ago.

"The very same recommendations made by the NAO were made then," he said. "We needed earlier diagnosis, we needed more integrated treatment and we needed greater awareness of the disease both amongst professionals and the public.

"Given that and given the fact that the government said they were responding to that report eight years ago, my questions are if the government will put in place the real incentives needed to make this strategy a reality on the ground."