Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, pursuant to the Answer of 18 July 2016 to Question 42687, on chronic illnesses, what progress his Department has made in delivering the Implementation Plan, published in March 2016, to support the Prime Minister's Challenge on Dementia 2020.

The Government, and its partners, are making good progress in implementing the priority actions identified in the Implementation Plan to the Prime Minister’s Challenge on Dementia.

We are supporting the Dementia Friends campaign, which envisages four million dementia Friends in England by 2020, who are able to recognise the symptoms of and support people with dementia. There are now over 1.9 million Dementia Friends.

We are encouraging communities to become dementia friendly. The Government's ambition is that over half of people will be living in dementia friendly communities by 2020. There are now 192 such communities in England.

Timely diagnosis is vital to ensure that people living with dementia get the support they need. We continue to maintain a diagnosis rate of two thirds of the estimated number of people with dementia in England should have a diagnosis with appropriate post-diagnostic support, in line with the national ambition.

NHS England has published the ‘Well Dementia Pathway’, which serves as a framework to ensure that people with dementia have a better experience of health and social care support from diagnosis to end of life care.

In August 2016, we published the Dementia Atlas, which people can use to review how their area is performing against a range of indicators across the Well Dementia Pathway.

Alongside the Implementation Plan, we published a Joint-Declaration on Dementia Post-Diagnostic Care and Support, which sets out the joint ambition across health, social care, local government and the voluntary sector to improve the quality of post-diagnosis care and define what this should look like.

Almost 800,000 National Health Service staff have received training to enable them to spot the signs and symptoms of dementia, to equip them to them to work effectively with people with the condition and their carers, and to signpost people to support and care. Additionally, over 100,000 social care staff have been trained to support people with dementia better.

Raising awareness of dementia risk reduction is another of the key priorities outlined in the Challenge on Dementia 2020 implementation plan. Public Health England’s (PHE) Dementia Intelligence Network, includes an online dementia profile which brings together all available indicators for dementia, including risk reduction. This profile enables the risk factors for dementia to be monitored on a regular basis.

PHE has published improved guidance on reducing dementia risk, including ‘Health Matters: A resource for health professionals and local authorities’ that makes the case for action in midlife to promote healthy lifestyles that can reduce the risk of dementia. PHE also increases awareness of dementia risk reduction through programmes for the public, such as the NHS Health Check.

Government funding for dementia research doubled over the last Parliament to around £60 million each year, and will be maintained at this level to total over £300 million in the period from 2015/16 to 2019/20. Much of this investment is in research to better understand dementia, to inform development of future treatments and ways to prevent the onset of the condition. Significant research is looking at how to improve symptom management, care and services for people with dementia, ways of maintaining independent living in early-stage dementia, and improving quality of life for people with dementia and their carers.