Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will promote the Dementia Friend training provided by the Alzheimer’s Society to officials in Government Departments.

The Department routinely promotes Dementia Friends to staff, including through Ministerially led initiatives during the annual Dementia Action Week.

One of the aspirations of the Challenge on Dementia 2020 is for all Government departments and public sector organisations to become dementia friendly and for all parts of local government being part of a local Dementia Action Alliance.

Government departments are actively engaging in the Dementia Friends programme with staff becoming Dementia Friends. A free, online, Dementia Friends resource is available to all civil servants.

Working with our delivery partners, we continue to target the involvement of Government departments, businesses and other large employers in the Dementia Friends Programme.

Work is already underway on a new dementia strategy for the period 2020 to 2025 which we expect to publish early next year. This will include dementia awareness as one the themes.