Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to ensure the needs of people with dementia are included in plans to ease the covid-19 lockdown; and what priority is being given to the reinstatement of care home visits as part of those plans.

New visiting arrangements will start on 8 March. From then, we will support care homes to allow every resident to nominate one named person who can have regular indoor visits. More detail on these changes will be published in updated visiting guidance. We will continue to look carefully at the latest data and set out plans for the next phase of visits for people in residential care.

We commissioned research through the National Institute for Health Research on how to manage or mitigate the impact of COVID-19 on people with dementia and their carers living in the community. We have supported day care services in implementing good Infection Prevention and Control by providing personal protective equipment and testing. We recognise the need for support groups to continue and as such formally organised groups of up to 15 can continue to meet.