Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to draft explicit guidance for carers of people with dementia to ensure that dementia patients are able to receive the physical and mental support needed from family and friends without risking infringement of covid-19 lockdown restrictions.

We recognise the crucial role that unpaid carers play in supporting people with dementia, especially during the pandemic. Our guidance for unpaid carers published on 8 April is designed to apply across a range of conditions.

In addition, on 2 December the Government updated the local tiering regulations to allow carers in all three tiers to arrange for another family member or friend to provide respite care and give carers a break. The new tiering regulations also allow individuals caring for someone with a disability at home to form a support bubble with another household.

On 1 December, we also published updated guidance to enable more meaningful indoor visits to take place for care home residents across all tiers. This is enabled by providing testing to visitors, which was available before Christmas.

NHS England and NHS Improvement’s guidance ‘Visiting healthcare inpatient settings during the COVID-19 pandemic’ states that there should be reasonable adjustments to allow certain groups of people, including people with dementia, to have a family member or friend visit them if not being present would cause the patient to be distressed. This applies to all inpatient settings.

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. Concise advice was produced for people with dementia and their carers respectively. This is available at the following link:

http://www.idealproject.org.uk/covid/

The Social Care Institute for Excellence has published advice on COVID-19 and dementia in care homes in collaboration with NHS England and NHS Improvement aimed at supporting residents, carers and homes which is available at the following link:

https://www.scie.org.uk/care-providers/coronavirus-covid-19/dementia/care-homes