BETRAYAL OF FAMILY CARERS WHO LOOK AFTER THE ELDERLY

 

Carers UK chief executive Helena Herklots rapped failings

Monday September 17,2012

By Sarah O’Grady

FAMILY carers who bear the brunt of failures in the home care service are at risk of illness and poverty, a devastating report reveals today.

It shows that as standards decline pensioners cared for in their own homes are being left all day to cope without food or drink.

The study also warns that serious failings in the care of the elderly is leaving vulnerable people subject to cruel or incompetent treatment.

Dementia home builds 1950s street to help residents feel at home

Residents can even relive fond memories of their youth by reading newspapers and magazines from the period.

Time warp: The old street
Time warp: The old street
SWNS

Carers have built a 50s street so dementia patients feel at home.

The Memory Lane features an old fashioned post office, greengrocers, phone box, pub, ration books and old tobacco tins.

Residents can even relive fond memories of their youth by reading newspapers and magazines from the period, detailing the Queen’s Coronation.

They are also able to peruse 1950s products in the Greengrocers, use the original weighing scales and choose fresh handmade cakes from the window.

Britain unprepared for 'tsunami' of dementia patients

More than one million people are expected to be living with the disease in 10 years, but there are not enough care homes. 

Sunday 16 September 2012

Britain’s dementia crisis is so huge that care homes and the health system will soon be unable to cater for the “tsunami” of people expected to be living with the condition, health experts warn. Unless a radical overhaul is taken, they say that hundreds of thousands of patients will face a future defined only by neglect.

Days before World Alzheimer’s Day and the start of a three-month national dementia awareness campaign launched by the Department of Health (DoH), researchers and former government advisers told The Independent on Sunday that if current trends continue, the healthcare system will reach saturation point in coming years.

One in three people over the age of 65 will go to their grave with dementia – a group of symptoms that slowly cause the mind to deteriorate. More than 800,000 people in this country live with the condition, and the number is expected to rise to more than a million in less than 10 years’ time. Britons now fear dementia more than cancer or death, according to a national poll, but new research by the Alzheimer’s Society shows that fewer than one in 10 people aged 55 or over have a plan in place to deal with a family member’s diagnosis.