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 reduce delays in transferring dementia patients from hospitals to social care settings.

Almost one million people in the United Kingdom are living with dementia, and that figure is expected to rise. Each of those people, alongside their friends, families and carers, have their own unique and important story of living with dementia, and this government wants a society where every person with dementia receives high-quality, compassionate care from diagnosis through to the end of life.

We are working to reduce delayed discharges by improving local partnership working between the National Health Service and social care systems, ensuring that people are not stuck in hospital beds when they are well enough to go home.

In December 2024, working with the Local Government Association and NHS England, we published a High Impact Change Model for improving the timely and effective discharge of people with dementia or delirium into the community. This resource offers practical guidance and a set of recommended actions that systems should consider for optimising the discharge process and deliver best practice for an individual’s journey to, during and following discharge. The model is available at the following link:

https://www.local.gov.uk/our-support/partners-care-and-health/better-care-fund-support-programme-2023-25/high-impact-change