Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what plans his Department has to improve awareness of dementia among (a) NHS staff, (b) GPs and (c) the public.

All NHS staff looking after people with dementia will go through a dementia awareness programme. Health Education England will provide Tier 1 training to an additional 250,000 staff by March 2015, and will ensure that the tools and training opportunities are available to all staff by the end of 2018.

We have put in place a new Dementia Directed Enhanced Service which has had over 80% take up by general practitioners to reward practices for facilitating timely diagnosis and support for people with dementia.

In May 2014 Public Health England in partnership with Alzheimer’s Society launched the Dementia Friends Campaign, a major social movement to improve dementia awareness. The campaign aims to improve understanding of dementia, and the little things that people can do to help people with dementia live well for longer, by asking people to sign up to become a Dementia Friend. A second burst of campaign activity including TV and online advertising is planned for December. Currently over 400,000 members of the public, employees of commercial partners and public sector staff, including the NHS, have signed up to become Dementia Friends.