By NICK WEBSTER
REMEMBERING to eat or how to brush your teeth are some of the more important things in life that dementia sufferers can forget.
There are 4,000 dementia sufferers in Gloucestershire, needing social care at home.
Roy Bell, 92, and his wife, Peggy, of Bishop’s Cleeve, both have mixed dementia to varying degrees.
Sunday 5 May 2013
A mental health patient has criticised planned cuts in dementia services as a money-saving operation.
Norfolk and Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust announced two weeks ago that staff numbers in Dementia and Complexity in Later Life services in West and Central Norfolk would be cut from 178 to 137.
The redundancies were said to be part of a four-year strategy involving “huge and complex” changes including new local commissioning arrangements and financial restraints caused by the recession and public spending cuts.
A former patient of the Fermoy Unit in Lynn, James Cramp, 69, of Columbia Way, was concerned about job cuts at the Chatterton House dementia unit and the Fermoy Unit at Queen Elizabeth Hospital.
A LOOMING £1bn cash crisis could leave dementia sufferers at greater threat from rogue traders who are exploiting cutbacks in social services to target some of the most vulnerable members of society.
Trading standards officers in Yorkshire have warned the rising numbers of pensioners who are suffering from mental illness are being placed at increased risk as care professionals are no longer available to ward off the advances of doorstep criminals.
The Alzheimer’s Society claims a £1bn funding gap is looming in social care nationally, as local authorities are forced to strip back resources to cope with the Government’s austerity measures. North Yorkshire County Council alone is faced with making savings of more than £90m across all its departments, and finance directors have warned front-line services including social care will be hit.
Many dementia sufferers will be left with a reduced level of care in their own homes, prompting fears they will be targeted by organised gangs of criminals who are travelling to the region to prey on the elderly.
