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The Health Secretary Sajid Javid has announced a 10-year plan which will include a focus on “prevention” of dementia and committing £375 million into research on “neurodegenerative diseases” over the next five years.
Speaking at an Alzheimer’s Society’s conference in London, Mr Javid told delegates the government’s strategy would look at the same four themes behind its reforms in health and care called the four P’s: “Prevention, personalisation, performance and people”.
Maintaining a healthy lifestyle will be prominent in the ‘prevention’ part of the plan after it has been estimated as much as “40 per cent of dementia is potentially preventable.”
Mr Javid said: “High blood pressure, physical inactivity, alcohol, obesity and healthy eating all have a part to play. We now know that what’s good for the heart is also good for the brain.
“So, we’re going to be very ambitious on prevention, because I don’t accept that dementia is an inevitable part of ageing. It isn’t.
“I want our dementia strategy to be a 10-year plan, not just five. Because we can only get to grips with long-term challenges by thinking long-term.”
The conference coincides with Dementia Action Week which runs from 16-22 May and is Alzheimer’s Society’s biggest and longest running awareness campaign. This year’s theme is diagnosis.
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In 2020, 46,000 women died from dementia compared to 41,000 women who died in the same year from Covid-19, researchers reveal.
According to Alzheimer’s Research UK, dementia became the leading cause of death for women in the UK in 2011 and has remained at this position, including in 2020 at the height of the pandemic where fewer women died of Covid-19.
The charity’s analysis, The Impact of Dementia on Women, is calling for action as part of the government’s new Women’s Health Strategy and its Dementia Strategy. It’s now urging the government to deliver on its Dementia Moonshot promise to double research funding and convene a Dementia Medicines Taskforce to speed up progress in finding new treatments for this devastating condition.
‘This report shows that its impact is hitting women particularly hard’
Hilary Evans, chief executive of Alzheimer’s Research UK, said: “It’s shocking to see despite dementia becoming the leading cause of death for UK women more than a decade ago, this situation remains unchanged today. Dementia is devastating for every person it affects, but this report shows that its impact is hitting women particularly hard.
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The Migration Advisory Committee (MAC) has urged the government to remove all charges to immigration visas and set a minimum wage of £10.50 an hour for care workers in England to help alleviate the impact of workforce challenges.
The MAC report, which briefs ministers on immigration policy has put forward 19 recommendations, which it says will alleviate the challenges facing the social care sector, including recruitment and retention.
The National Care Forum (NCF) the Voluntary Organisations Disability Group (VODG) and the Homecare Association have welcomed the report and said this “reiterates some very important issues” which includes issues of underfunding and how this continues to “exacerbate challenges to providers”, high staff vacancy and turnover rates and the “impact of low pay and the care workforce challenges”.
‘We know the true value of care work is much more’
Vic Rayner, chief executive of the NCF and member of the social care expert advisory for the MAC said: “While a focus on the minimum pay for care workers in this report is a helpful contribution to this issue, the NCF has consistently called for an independent pay review for social care, which involves employers, commissioners, and employee representatives with a view to implementing a new career-based pay and reward structure which is comparable with the NHS and equivalent sectors and fully-funded by central government.”
The VODG is also urging the government to “embrace” the committee’s recommendations to fully fund a rate of social care pay above the National Living Wage.
Dr Rhidian Hughes, chief executive of VODG said: “At present, charities are prevented from improving pay rates because funding passed down by central government to local authorities falls woefully insufficient.
Almost 20,000 home care workers have left their jobs since September when the government first announced its ‘no jab no job’ policy but its decision to scrap it from 15 March, has been welcomed by care bosses.
The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) has confirmed its Vaccination as a Condition of Deployment (VCOD) policy (originally due to come into force on 1 April for home care workers and the NHS in England) will be revoked effective from 15 March, after consultation with the NHS and care sector.
No jab no job U-turn ‘preventing further care workers leaving’
While the regulations had already come into force for care home workers last November, a vaccine mandate had not come into force for home care workers. With many home care bosses reporting they have lost staff since September, the U-turn was welcomed.
“We are very pleased the government is reversing the VCOD regulations and therefore preventing further care workers from leaving the workforce”, said Dr Jane Townson, the chief executive of the Homecare Association, which has a membership of over 2,340 home care providers in the UK.
“We have always strongly supported vaccination against COVID-19, as it helps protect the recipient from severe illness and death. However, we believe persuasion is more effective and proportionate than compulsion, in encouraging uptake amongst the remaining workers with a genuine fear about vaccination.
“We also need to balance the mitigated risk of infection with the very real risk of even more older and disabled people going without care due to workforce shortages.”
Domiciliary care bosses have reported that 89 per cent of home care staff had received one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine, as of 13 February 2022.
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