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Carers missing out on £1.6m in support

Hidden carers are failing to claim the support they are entitled to.

By Ian Dipple Friday 13 December 2013 Updated: 13/12 09:28

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CARERS across Redditch are missing out on more than £1.6million of support because they do not know they are entitled to it.

A total of 522 people in the borough are failing to claim carers allowance according to figures released to mark Carers Rights Day.

The benefit is worth £59.75 a week – or £3,107 a year – and is available to people aged 16 and over who spend at least 35 hours a week caring for their loved one.

There are 8,889 carers in Redditch looking after a loved one with the numbers having increased by over 1,000 in the last decade.

But charities say there are many more so-called hidden carers who are failing to claim the support they are entitled to either through a lack of advice or because they do not class themselves as a carer and instead consider it their responsibility or part of family duty.

Stop trying to cure Alzheimer's – and prevent it instead

One of Britain’s top dementia experts says we’ve wasted BILLIONS on useless drugs

By Professor David Smith

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Danger zone: The brown areas of this brain show Alzheimer’s

We’ve been waiting for a breakthrough drug treatment for Alzheimer’s for decades.

An astonishing £25 billion has been spent worldwide on trying to develop one, and yet we still don’t have anything that can slow down, let alone stop, the disease.

It’s true that drugs such as Aricept may help some patients with their symptoms, but only for a short while.

That leaves patients and their families in the hopeless position of waiting for the drug companies to discover a treatment.

What’s so cruel is that no one has ever made it clear to them that it doesn’t have to be like that.

There are other options.

There are things that can be done to improve the situation right now — but governments, charities and other research bodies need to make a long overdue switch to a new strategy: preventing the disease.

What is amazing is that nearly all that  £25 billion has been spent researching and testing ways to stop just one thing that goes wrong in patients’ brains.

Esther Rantzen: basic needs of care home residents are not being met

Care homes are failing to meet fundamental needs of residents such as food and water, Esther Rantzen says

 

Care homes are failing to meet the basic needs of residents such as making sure they have food and water, Esther Rantzen has said, as she reveals her newly opened helpline has received hundreds of calls reporting abuse in its first week.

It comes after the Daily Telegraph disclosed more than 1,000 care home residents have died of thirst or while suffering dehydration over the past decade.

The television presenter described the figures as “horrifying” and suggested care home staff should be forced to participate in roll plays to understand what it means to be “confined to a bed” and “unheard and ignored”.

SilverLine – a helpline for older people modelled on ChildLine – has had 400 calls from older people reporting abuse since it launched a week ago.