Dementia Action Week

Jim Shannon Excerpts

Thursday 27th May 2021 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Care (Helen Whately)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered Dementia Action Week.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth (Debbie Abrahams) on securing this debate to mark Dementia Action Week. I pay particular tribute to her work as co-chair of the all-party parliamentary group on dementia, and to the charities that she and I both work with, including the Alzheimer’s Society.

I know how hard the last 12 months have been for those living with dementia and their families. Living with dementia is hard in normal times, but harder still during a pandemic. It has been an incredibly difficult year. I know that, and I have seen that. There are more than 850,000 people living with dementia and around 670,000 carers looking after them. I thank everyone who is caring for someone with dementia.

While many thousands of people have dementia, we must not, and I do not, see it as an inevitable part of ageing. Although one in six of those over 80 have dementia, five in six do not. Around a third of dementia cases are estimated to be preventable. I am ambitious—ambitious about preventing dementia, ambitious about developing treatments, and ambitious about one day developing a cure. However, first I will update the House on what we have been doing under the umbrella of the challenge on dementia 2020 and in response to the pandemic.

Last year, we assessed delivery of the 2020 challenge, which showed that we now have more than 3 million dementia friends, thanks to the Alzheimer’s Society. We have 437 areas across England and Wales signed up as dementia-friendly communities. We have 137 trusts signed up to the dementia-friendly hospital charter and, thanks to Skills for Care and Health Education England, more than a million care workers and another million NHS workers have received dementia awareness training. Added to that, our commitment to spend £300 million on dementia research over five years was delivered a year early, with £344 million spent over four years.

Timely diagnosis of dementia is really important to help people to understand what is going on, find out what support is available and get advice on what happens next. Since 2016, we have consistently met the challenge on dementia target of two thirds of people living with dementia receiving a formal diagnosis. However, at the start of the pandemic many memory assessment services had to close, and the dementia diagnosis rate has dropped below the national ambition for the first time since 2016.

While we have supported remote or virtual memory assessment services, I recognise that that is not for everyone. I want to see in-person services fully functional as soon as possible, because a diagnosis can make such a difference, allowing people to access the support that they need.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

The charity Music for Dementia says that those who have started to sing or listen to music on a daily basis have

“more than doubled their quality of life…whilst halving their depressive symptoms.”

Could that charity be introduced to the Government’s strategy?

[Helen Whately]

The hon. Member makes a really important point: music is one of the things that is known to really help people who are living with dementia. It helps to improve the quality of their lives, and it has been one of things that has been hard to access during the pandemic. I am determined that we see that kind of support restarted, and develop further support along those lines in the months and years ahead.

We have allocated £17 million of funding to NHS England to get the diagnosis rate that I was talking about back up to where it should be, to support the needs of those waiting for a diagnosis and to help those who have been unable to access support due to the pandemic. Everyone with dementia should receive meaningful personalised care, from diagnosis to end of life, to help them to live with the condition and to live the fullest possible life for as long as possible.

It is imperative that we support those—often husbands, wives, partners, sons and daughters—who care for loved ones with dementia. They take on a huge burden of care, both practically and emotionally. Since the Care Act 2014, every carer for someone with dementia should have their needs assessed by their local authority and should then receive the support that they need, whether that is support with caring or respite, time out for themselves or sometimes help with extra costs. That is crucial, not only because carers are so important to the person with dementia they care for, but because they need to have a life alongside caring.

Throughout the past year, we have worked with the Alzheimer’s Society, Age UK, Carers UK, other charities, care providers, local authorities and the NHS to work out how best to support people with dementia and their carers during the pandemic and put that support in place. We have provided more than £500,000 in funding to the Alzheimer’s Society for its Dementia Connect programme, £500,000 to the Carers Trust for its support to unpaid carers, £122,000 to Carers UK to extend its helpline opening hours and £480,000 to the Race Equality Foundation.

We have provided free personal protective equipment for carers where they live separately from the people they care for, in line with clinical advice. We have given carers priority to vaccines in line with Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation prioritisation, considered them time and again in guidance, worked to better identify them and supported local authorities in the restoration of day and respite services, including with nearly £12 million in funding from the infection control fund.

As we come out of the pandemic, we want not only to ensure that we restore and improve early diagnosis and support for people living with dementia and their carers, but to go further: to prevent people from getting dementia in the first place, support research to develop effective treatments and, ultimately, find a cure. The National Institute for Health Research is right now supporting several studies on dementia.

The 2019 Conservative party manifesto committed to doubling funding for dementia research and delivering a moonshot of ambitious goals. The moonshot will expand the UK’s internationally leading research effort to understand the mechanisms underlying the development and progression of dementia, develop new therapies and help to prevent the condition. We are working right now on developing a new dementia strategy to boost dementia awareness, diagnosis, care, support and research in England. As everyone knows, we are committed to wider reform of social care; we will bring forward proposals for that later this year.

We want a society where the public think and feel differently about dementia—where there is less fear, stigma and discrimination, and more understanding. We want to reduce the number of preventable cases of dementia. We are determined to support those who are living with dementia to live the fullest possible life for as long as possible, and to support those who care for them. We will lead the way in dementia research and innovation to find effective treatments and, ultimately, a cure.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

It is a pleasure to speak on this issue, which is incredibly important to many of us in the United Kingdom. Last week was Dementia Action Week, which reminded us all of how important it is. Dementia has touched many lives all too often. I am sure that all of us present know of someone who has been diagnosed with dementia. Some people have spoken of personal relationships. I have had a number of friends who have also, unfortunately, had dementia. It is one of the leading causes of death in the United Kingdom.

Statistics from Alzheimer’s UK indicate that some 850,000 people in the United Kingdom are living with dementia. Some 20,000 of those people live in Northern Ireland, and unfortunately there are 1,152 in my constituency. For those with dementia who reside in care homes the generalisation of memory loss is simply not enough. I believe that we need to consider the long-term effects that patients have suffered from not being able to seek comfort through seeing loved ones as often as needed. A constant feeling of fright, anxiety and loneliness has consumed the minds of dementia patients.

I mentioned the Music for Dementia charity in an earlier intervention on the Minister, and she was kind in her response. It is important that music is introduced to people with dementia because it can help them. The Department must consider research into the benefits of music, and a UK-wide strategy to implement such support would be welcome.

There are things that we can do ourselves to reduce the risk of developing dementia, such as taking care of our diet, getting plenty of regular exercise and stimulating our mental health. But people are not always to blame for what happens.

The Alzheimer’s Society’s recent “Cure the Care System” campaign highlights the struggles of looking after those with dementia, and I want to speak up for the carers. Some 700,000 unpaid carers are looking after people living with dementia across the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. I find that astonishing, and more work must be done to offer them sufficient respite. The responsibilities, as I know from friends and their families, can become overwhelming, and it is crucial that carers know that help and support are available. The people supporting those who live with dementia have proved their dedication to this country, and it is our duty in this House and across the whole of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland to ensure that they are protected in society today.

I conclude by thanking the Alzheimer’s Society, Music for Dementia and all the other charities. They should know—I put it on the record today—that their work is appreciated by so many, including me and every other elected representative and every carer who depends on then.