New report highlights care home market failing to tackle dementia
Published 17 March 2009
Care providers are failing to gear their services to cope with the rising numbers of people living with dementia, according to a new report released today (Tuesday, 17 March) by Laing & Buisson.
It found that a third of care homes specialising in dementia do not provide their staff with dementia care training.
Evidence from the report will be presented to a parliamentary inquiry today by All Party Parliamentary Group on Dementia (APPG) The APPG is investigating whether social care staff caring for people with dementia are being equipped with the right skills to deliver quality dementia care.
Neil Hunt, Chief Executive of Alzheimer's Society, says,
'Two-thirds of care home residents have dementia, that's almost a quarter of a million people yet as these new figures show the vast majority of people are not in homes set up to care for people with dementia.
It is a sad indictment of the current state of dementia care that a third of care homes specifically registered for dementia fail to provide their staff with any dementia care training. This is probably the tip of the iceberg with many thousands more people with dementia in non-specialist homes.
Alzheimer's Society research has shown that training staff to deliver person centred care can improve people's quality of life and reduce the use of dangerous antipsychotic drugs. In less than 15 years there will be a million people living with dementia, we need to gear the whole of the care home sector to delivering good dementia care.'
