Campaign will touch a nerve

There’s hardly a family throughout Wearside that hasn’t been touched by Alzheimer’s disease or other dementia conditions.

And many will know just how stressful it can be to help vulnerable family members being looked after at care homes.

So there will be much interest in the campaign of two Sunderland sisters to set up a dementia rights charter to protect those living with the illness.

Ashley Joachim, 47, and sister Lesley Haswell, 50, from Sunderland, lost their mum Patricia Heslop – who had dementia – at the age of 75, in April 2017.

Mrs Heslop, who was suffering from late-stage Alzheimer’s disease, was being looked after at a South Tyneside care home.

The sisters say that after seeing her condition deteriorate, an ambulance was called at their request and their mum was admitted to hospital in November 2016, where doctors diagnosed her with an impacted hip fracture requiring extensive hip replacement surgery.

She never recovered from her injuries and died five months later in palliative care. The sisters believed their mum had suffered a fall which had not been reported.

At an inquest held in March last year Sunderland Coroner Derek Winter ruled Mrs Heslop died from the combination of natural causes and an unwitnessed fall which had resulted in a fractured right femur.

The sisters have started campaign – I Still Matter Now – in memory of their mum. It sets out a Dementia Charter – including the introduction of CCTV into care homes.

Ashleigh said: “People with dementia are vulnerable. “The Government are not stepping up to the plate on this issue and it ends up being families like us having to suffer.

“We need the charter to be a nationaltemplatebecauseevery care home is different.”

The I Still Matter Now Campaign is an ambitious one but if it can snowball it would have far-reaching consequences on elderly and dementia care and gain the support of thousands of sufferers’ relatives.

People can follow the I Still Matter Now Campaign on Twitter @ISTILLMATTERNOW.