It’s wrong that dementia patients pay for own care
Regarding a recent article on dementia in Shropshire that related to a report commissioned by the Alzheimer’s Society. In 2001, my mother, who was living in Shropshire (as she had all her life), was diagnosed with dementia.
It was a devastating illness for her, her friends and all our family. Within a short space of time, my brother and I had to sell her home to pay for her care. I hadn’t appreciated that if she’d had a physical illness, the costs for her care would have been paid for by the NHS, but because her illness related to her memory and her inability to move around unaided, we had to pay for all aspects of the care she needed.
She was classed as in need of social care, not health care regardless of the fact dementia is a health condition. Consequently, she had to pay a ‘dementia tax’ and that situation has not changed in the intervening years.
The interpretation that successive governments have placed on what is ‘health’ and what does not constitute health, leads to seemingly random exclusion from state funding for people with dementia, for all but a very few.
The report warns that the number of people in Shropshire will increase by nearly half in the next decade alone. It predicts that by 2030, 8,072 people in this region will have dementia, up from 5,532 in 2019.
Currently, the cost of caring for people in Shropshire with dementia is £215 million, but it will soar to £384 million by 2030.
In terms of the costs for social care in England, more than 60 per cent per year will be paid for by people with dementia and their families. Previous research by the society has shown that typically, the care needed has cost an average of £100,000 per person. Needless to say, most people have fallen foul of this ‘dementia tax’.
A government worthy of its name and its citizens should already have understood that a planned approach to this issue is essential now.
Even as I write, a report published says that nearly 100 heads of social care services expressed an unprecedented level of concern for their capacity to cope this winter. Within the next ten years, demographic trends indicate that social care will be depended upon by a very sizeable proportion of the population of Shropshire, and the rest of the country. I don’t want to worry about this issue, nor do my children.
Neither do we want or need more fudge from politicians. As with our National Health Service and the social care service system in Scotland, we want and need a nationally, well planned, well funded social care system we all pay into during our working lives and we want it in Shropshire and beyond, free to all who need it, for those with or without dementia.
Jane Asterley Berry, Shrewsbury
Send us your letters for publication:
Email us at starmail@shropshirestar.co.uk or write to: Readers’ Letters, Shropshire Star, Ketley, Telford, TF1 5HU. Letters MUST include the writer’s name, address and telephone number. Letters will only be published anonymously in exceptional circumstances. The editor reserves the right to condense or amend letters.
