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Dementia Sufferers

I congratulate the hon. Member for Rugby and Kenilworth (Jeremy Wright) on securing the debate, which deals with a topic of great importance in my constituency and that of every hon. Member present. During carers week, I met a group of carers from Warwickshire whom the hon. Gentleman had invited to the House. I know that care and carers' issues are of concern to him. As parliamentary champion for carers week, I have met some constituents who care for people suffering from dementia. There were quite a number this year—that was not by design, it was just how it happened. Listening to them about their experiences has driven me to want to improve the support that they receive. I have previously raised my concern about the impact of caring on carers' health. We know too little about the subject and more research should be done, but it is clear that caring for a dementia sufferer has an impact on health. Evidence from carers themselves suggests that such caring is physically and emotionally exhausting. A study reported in the British Medical Journal noted that caring for people with dementia was stressful and that 30 to 50 per cent. of such carers experienced depression. A study in the United States has discovered that caring has an impact on the immune systems of carers for dementia sufferers and stroke victims in particular. Dementia affects about 700,000 people in the UK, and the number of sufferers is expected to grow to 840,000 by 2010. I met a carer in my constituency who had been caring for her husband, who suffered from vascular dementia, for a number of years. He was also fed with a PEG tube—percutaneous endoscopic gastrostomy tube—and had a variety of other needs. His wife was a remarkable person who gave him a truly amazing level of care. She told me, ““I am his nurse,”” and described how she fought to establish a routine of care and to train paid care workers to her own exacting standards. The biggest issue that the carer faced related to respite care. She managed to get a break each week, with support from Crossroads Caring for Carers, but only for short periods to play bingo twice a week and to shop for two hours at the local supermarket. Every attempt to use respite care for longer periods, especially one recent attempt, had proved traumatic. In fact, as a result of poor standards in one local care home, she had to visit the home repeatedly during the week to point out to the paid staff what they were not doing correctly. Her husband came home with an infection that she thought could have been avoided. She was so stressed at the end of what was meant to have been a respite week that she developed rashes and had to visit her GP. My constituent had further worries about the support that she should have been receiving. She found that certain essential supplies were not made available to her. Although she received a free supply of incontinence pads, the pads that she needed when changing her husband's pads were not supplied and had to be bought. Such problems and her concern about the low quality of respite care available locally made me feel that the situation was just not good enough. I wrote to the Commission for Social Care Inspection and others on her behalf. After carers week, I visited an excellent drop-in and buddy service in my constituency that is run by Age Concern in Salford for the carers of people with dementia. I talked to carers while the people for whom they cared were supported by Age Concern staff and volunteers. The service was designed for people suffering from early onset dementia. Some of the people there were in their 50s, but many of the carers had been supported by Age Concern's project for so many years that they carried on coming. I commend that service and hope that it will continue to be funded through the carers grant for many years to come. I discovered that those carers talked about similar issues to those raised by the carer whom I had visited in her home the week before. One described to me how he felt that he had to fight the system to get his benefit entitlement and the supplies that he needed, on top of fulfilling the most exacting and difficult caring responsibilities. He found the process draining. I had a long discussion with carers about the inadequacies of local respite care. They were experts. They knew where the best standards were to be found, and they knew which homes were of low quality. My hon. Friend the Minister has described Alzheimer's and other forms of dementia as asking new questions of our health and social care system, just as we are doing in this debate. He has announced the development of a national dementia strategy, which is to be published next year. Such a strategy must help to tackle some of the inadequacies in current services and to cope with the expected substantial increase in demand due to an increasing number of dementia sufferers. The Minister has said that we must bring dementia ““out of the shadows”” and that people with dementia and their families should"““feel able to seek support at the earliest possible stage””." I agree wholeheartedly.