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A report from the Public Accounts Committee (PAC), published on 16 March 2010, finds that there is a wide gulf between the Department of Health’s assurances on what it is going to do about dementia services and what it actually does.
Dementia covers a range of progressive, terminal brain conditions which affect an estimated 600,000 people in England. This number is rising rapidly. People with dementia require a complex mix of health and social care with patients regularly moving across organisational boundaries.
The effectiveness of care depends on co-ordination and co-operation between the NHS, social services, care homes and the voluntary sector. Stigma and negative attitudes towards mental illness and old age further exacerbate the problem. Dementia costs £8.2 billion a year in direct health and social care costs but much of this spend is in response to crisis in the later stages of the disease.
In February 2009 the Department of Health launched an ambitious and comprehensive five-year National Dementia Strategy aimed at helping people to live well with dementia, costing an estimated £1.9 billion to implement over ten years. National and regional leadership was put in place and initial seed funding of £150 million was allocated to Primary Care Trusts (PCTs) to assist implementation over the first two years.
The report finds that the Department of Health has failed to match its commitments to raise the quality and priority of dementia care with a robust approach to implementation. Improvements identified in 2007 as urgently needed, some of which could have been adopted immediately, have not been suitably prioritised.
Improving dementia services in England - an interim report (PDF)