Disabled People: Dementia

Baroness Pitkeathley Excerpts

Monday 11th October 2010 Lords Chamber

[Earl Howe]

My Lords, an informed and effective workforce is clearly central to the delivery of the dementia strategy. The Department of Health has recently published reports which map the current level of training, and these have been widely disseminated to key bodies involved in providing education and training. Professor Alistair Burns, who is the National Clinical Director for Dementia, is chairing an advisory group that will aim to ensure the development of proper education and training for all staff involved, and he will be engaging with all the key organisations in doing so.

[Baroness Pitkeathley]

My Lords, the Minister will be aware that family carers have two main concerns about dementia services. The first is that they are patchy and are not uniform across the country and the second is that they are not co-ordinated across acute voluntary, independent and family care. How will the Minister ensure that those two issues are better addressed under the proposals in the White Paper?

[Earl Howe]

My Lords, there are several prongs to the strategy which will be needed to meet the concern of the noble Baroness. One is to drive up quality standards through a proper tariff for these services and another is better regulation of providers. As the House will know, the NICE quality standard was published in the summer, which will improve commissioning to deliver greater efficiencies, not simply in a financial sense but also to deliver a better pathway of care for patients, with a focus on outcomes.