Putting care right campaign – care at home - Alzheimer's Society

Putting care right campaign – care at home

There are 750,000 people with dementia living in the UK and two thirds of people with dementia live in the community. Alzheimer's Society's Support. Stay. Save. report reveals many people with dementia and carers receive insufficient support and care at home. Part of the Society's ongoing putting care right campaign, Support. Stay. Save presents findings from over 2,400 people with dementia, carers and home care workers.

What are the headline findings of the report?

Support. Stay. Save found that people with dementia and carers greatly value living in their own home and being able to play a part in the community and want services to enable them to meet these aspirations. However, many are not receiving sufficient support and care for this to be a reality.

Half of those who responded to Alzheimer's Society survey said that people with dementia and their carers living at home do not receive adequate support to meet their needs. This lack of support not only leads to admission to hospital and early entry into care homes, but also risks leaving hundreds of thousands of unpaid carers at risk of stress, depression and other serious illnesses.

Separate analysis on Support. Stay. Save suggests that as many as 50,000 people currently living with dementia in the UK may end up going into care homes early because of insufficient support in the community. For each month these people can be supported at home, rather than in care, the state will save £70 million in care home bills.

The research also found that the home care workers who responded regularly worked with people with dementia and understood that they could have a good quality of life. However, many reported they still needed more training on delivering good dementia care.

• Download a copy of the report and executive summary.
  

What the Society is calling for

These findings show that while people with dementia greatly value living in their own home, many are not receiving sufficient services. Alzheimer's Society is calling for:

• An urgent and concerted effort to support people with dementia to live independently in their own homes and avoid early and unnecessary admission to long term care.

• Commissioners to recognise the considerable resources already being spent across health and social care on dementia and the opportunity to use them more effectively.

• Carers to be supported to carry out their caring role.

• Joined-up working across health and social care to become the norm

• Variable experiences of care and to be tackled through expanded sharing of good practice.

• Home care workers to be supported to provide good care to people with dementia in their own homes.

More detailed recommendations can be found in the report.

Take action

Alzheimer's Society campaign makes clear the need for improved services and we need you to help us make that case.

• If you live in England or Wales you can take action now
• If you live in Northern Ireland you can take action now
  

Development of the report

To build up evidence for this report, the Society ran two surveys in autumn 2010, one on people with dementia and carers and one on care workers.  1436 carers and people with dementia and 989 home care workers responded to these surveys and the Society would like to thank all those who responded.

In addition to these surveys, the Society conducted group discussions and one to one interviews with people with dementia and carers and interviews with commissioners of social care services.

via alzheimers.org.uk