Dementia

Baroness Pitkeathley Excerpts

Thursday 18th January 2024 Grand Committee

[Baroness Pitkeathley (Lab)]

My Lords, I give my thanks to the noble Baroness, Lady Browning, who, against convention, I should call my noble friend, because we have worked together on these issues for many years. I thank her not only for securing this debate but for hitting the nail on the head when it comes to the situation between health and social care. That lack of parity of esteem is at the root of all the problems she outlined.

Although a health condition and the biggest cause of death in the UK, dementia receives most attention through not the NHS but social care, which has always been the poor relation—the tail-end Charlie—vis-à-vis the NHS. That did not matter in 1948 when it was set up, because we all died much earlier, but as we grow older, with greater incidence of dementia and other comorbidities, it matters hugely. It matters for diagnosis—the noble Baroness mentioned the long waits—or the absence of any diagnosis at all. It matters for services, both the access to services suitable for dementia patients and their carers, and the quality of the services. We heard from the noble Baroness, Lady Browning, about the lack of training of many people who provide those services. It also matters for access to medication, because we hear about the postcode lottery of what dementia medication is available.

Of course, its effect is nowhere more significant than it is on the biggest providers of care for those with dementia: not the NHS or social care but their own families—the spouses, sons, daughters and friends—who are often locked into an intolerable situation by the care they provide, however willing they are to undertake it. They suffer financially—we heard about the enormous costs of care—and they suffer physically, as their physical and mental health is at risk. Three-quarters of all carers report damage to their health as a direct result of their caring. They lose financial security and end up in poor health and often isolated, since their social circle shrinks dramatically. If there were more parity, we might be able to focus more on preventive services for dementia sufferers and their carers. There is no cure, but the progress of the disease can be slowed, or its onset delayed, by such things as exercise, group activities and interest groups—just the sort of things that are cut in times of austerity.

I hope the Minister will assure the Committee that the Government are committed to providing diagnosis and support at the earliest possible stage, and that they will shortly publish a long-term workforce strategy, such as the NHS one, for the social care workforce. I remind your Lordships that one in three of us will get dementia—that is seven people in this Room. We owe it to ourselves as well as future society to make it a priority.