Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will make it his policy to include specialist dementia wards for hospitals in plans for supporting people with dementia in England for 2020-25.

We know that environment in which care is given and the knowledge, skills and attitudes of the workforce delivering that care are critical to the outcomes of people living with dementia.

We supported the National Dementia Action Alliance’s Dementia Friendly Hospital Charter which is helping ensure hospitals are able to support people living with dementia and their families effectively. The Charter has recently been updated in response to COVID-19 and we committed in the Challenge on Dementia 2020 that all National Health Service staff would receive training on dementia appropriate to their role.

We expect to build on this work when we update our Dementia strategy.