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Health and Education

I entirely agree. The problem with dementia is that they have got you coming and going. A doctor will often be unwilling to accept that young-onset dementia could possibly be the explanation, and in cases of older-onset dementia they might well say that there are plenty of other explanations for the symptoms, and that this is simply what happens when people get older. The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to draw our attention to young-onset dementia, and we also need to persuade the medical profession to have the courage—as well as the knowledge—to make these diagnoses in cases of older-onset dementia. Training is also important in another respect—training for those who care for people with dementia, either in a residential care home setting or as visiting social workers for people with dementia who live at home. It is crucial that such people have an understanding of what dementia is, how it affects people and what can be done to ameliorate its symptoms. It is remarkable that anyone who works in a care home has to receive training in lifting, handling, fire regulations and many other things, yet they do not have to undergo even one single hour of training in dementia. That is even more ridiculous when we consider that a substantial proportion of the care home population—perhaps some two thirds of them—have dementia, and that that proportion is likely to increase. The policy of this Government is—as, I am sure, the policy of any future Government would be—that people should be cared for in their own homes for as long as possible, and for as long as they wish. That means that those who have to be cared for in a residential environment will, generally speaking, be those who cannot be cared for at home, and substantial numbers of those people will be in that position because they have an advanced form of dementia. It is therefore becoming more important than ever that those who work in a care home environment understand dementia and receive training in it. The Government's dementia strategy states that training is important and that the strategy will cover it. I very much hope that when they put the final touches to the strategy, they will recognise how important that subject is, and that it should run through all the aspects of dementia that the strategy rightly seeks to address. In my last point, I want to link what I have been saying to the theme that has rightly emerged in many hon. Members' speeches today, by saying something about the tragedy of baby P and all that surrounds it. The argument for training for the broader social work profession is also relevant here. We need a better-trained social work profession. We know that numerous substantial mistakes were made in the case of baby P, and in other cases that we have heard about, and it seems to me that training is part of the answer. However, training can be of real value only if we can retain the staff who have been trained. One of the problems in the social work profession generally, and in the care home sector in particular, is that it is very difficult to keep members of staff in position for long. There is a huge amount of churn in the profession. People do not stay in one job for long, and the training that they have received may go to waste if they move on to another job or occupation. We need to examine ways of keeping people in their jobs for longer, and one of the ways of doing that is to recognise that the caring professions are just that. First, they are made up of people who wish to care. Secondly, they are made up of people who wish to be treated as professionals. We have to allow them to achieve both those aims. One of the counter-intuitive aspects of the baby P incident, it seems to me, is that when we hear about those terrible failures in the social work profession, we put down social workers as a result. As I say, however, counter-intuitively, the right answer may instead be to raise up the social work profession and say how important it is, if we expect people to act as qualified professionals with good judgment, and to give them the training and then the space to exercise it. That is a hugely important lesson to draw from this episode: it is not an easy lesson, but it is an extremely necessary one. Let me finish where I began—on the dementia strategy—and say to the Government simply this: I welcome the strategy, as I think most sensible people would, but the Government have raised many hopes in bringing it forward, so they must not disappoint. The strategy must deliver not just the detail but the urgency that the Government promised. We must see it brought forward soon, because it seems to me that there are few more important things that any Government can do.