Social Care Funding
Debate between Helen Grant and Neil Carmichael(12 years, 5 months ago)
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Neil Carmichael
Well, we certainly have experience in our Conservative association back at home. An interesting thing about my constituency is that I came across somebody who was 106. She wanted to make a complaint and she came up to me at some speed. I did not think it was anything to do with the care she was getting, and it was not: she had received a birthday card from Her Majesty the Queen every year for the past six years, but unfortunately she had received the same one each year, and she wanted a different one.
As that story shows, we have an ageing population, and that brings challenges, of which dementia is obviously one. More and more people are experiencing dementia, not just because they have it but because a family member has, and that can be just as challenging. We need to prepare the ground because an increasing number of people have dementia.
Mrs Helen Grant (Maidstone and The Weald) (Con)
One million people will have dementia by 2025. Does my hon. Friend agree that this terrible disease must have a proper place in any funding review or funding reform?
Neil Carmichael
That is exactly the theme I was about to develop, so I will simply agree with that excellent point.
In my constituency, we are promoting the “Write it Down” campaign. If somebody thinks they or a member of their family is getting dementia, but they are not quite sure, it is a good idea for them to write down sequences of events, because that will trigger a recognition or an acceptance that they or their loved one are forgetting things. The campaign is gaining quite some traction in my constituency, and I recommend that hon. Members promote it in theirs. Gloucestershire is getting quite a lot of accolades for the campaign, and families are successfully using this tool to diagnose dementia, which, we should remember, is not an easy thing to do.
I want to talk briefly about carers. Their role has been mentioned, and rightly so, because they do an enormous amount, and their numbers are huge. A fact that is sometimes overlooked, however, is that a lot of carers are surprisingly young, and some still go to school. We need to bear that in mind.