If Dad had cancer like Mum, not dementia, we wouldn’t have had to pay £100,000 for his care
In a passionate cri de coeur, a patron of the Alzheimer’s Society laments a burning injustice
hospital, we had to find a home. There was no prospect of getting any contribution from the state, even though Dad had faithfully paid all his taxes and contributions throughout his life.
My sister and I sold his lovely tudor house in Shropshire for £350,000 to fund his care.
Any home for advanced dementia is the last place in the world you’d want to be, and I am glad that my father only lived there for a few months.
Pneumonia carried him away one early November afternoon in 2004. By that point, we had spent almost £100,000 on his care.
I am still angry. Angry that no one came and asked us if we needed any help with my father, angrier still that, even after all these years and all the knowledge we now have, the Government refuses to foot the bill. We were promised dementia reform in March 2017: It has been delayed six times. It beggars belief that the NHS does not cover laundry services or meals on wheels for dementia patients.
Yet the Government wriggles out of its responsibilities by saying that they will pay for medical care, but not for social care.
Since my father’s death, I have become a patron of the Alzheimer’s Society and I have seen and read about the explosion of cases like my own.
And while no two people are the same, there are common elements to every story: The despair, the fear, the loneliness, the increasing inability to care for the sufferer... and always the implacable will of the Government not to help the victims.
I wonder what we will all have to do to make the Government understand that dementia is an illness, like any other. Its needs are clear and very tangible. Social care – the work that is done to keep people in their own homes and out of care homes – massively reduces the burden on the NHS. It is far, far cheaper to help a sufferer live at home for as long as possible. The state should be falling over itself to encourage us to do just that.
And when that becomes impossible, as inevitably it does, they should be afforded the dignity of a comfy bed in the NHS, taken care of in their last days, secure in the knowledge that their children and loved ones are not losing out because they are ill.
This is the society we all deserve. It is time the Government made it a reality.