Health chiefs to be quizzed on dementia care failings

NHS chief executive David Nicholson and representatives from the Department of Health will be questioned about a National Audit Office (NAO) report condemning the state of dementia services in England.

Dementia costs the UK £17 billion a year but the NAO report highlighted that health and social care services continue to provide inefficient care, wasting money and failing to deliver better quality of life to people with dementia and their carers.

The Public Accounts Committee is expected to ask why services have failed people with dementia for so long and what steps are being taken to ensure change for the future.

Alzheimer's Society chief executive Neil Hunt, says,

'The human and economic cost of dementia is hard to ignore. 700,000 people live with this devastating condition in the UK and it costs the UK £17 billion every year. A lot of this money is being spent on inadequate dementia care; we need to plan now to make better use of resources. The demographic reality of our ageing society means that there will be over a million people with dementia in less than 20 years.

The Department of Health is beginning to wake up to the fact that dementia is one of the country's biggest health and social care challenges. It has announced plans for the first ever National Dementia Strategy. This is a huge set forward but words must be turned into actions. The millions of families who are living with dementia now can't wait years for a strategy to come into force. The Government needs to explain what it is going to do in the short term to respond to the challenge of dementia. The Public Accounts Committee must ensure that the Government has robust plans and investment in place to cope with this growing crisis.'