With some 850,000 people in the UK suffering from dementia, and numbers set to rise to more than 1 million within the next 8 years, the Alzheimer’s Society say more training is needed to ensure people with dementia receive the highest quality of care and the challenges of dementia are met.
Unfortunately a high proportion of those caring for dementia sufferers have had no specialist training. Understanding the various types of dementia, learning how to manage it, and having a greater awareness of the many sensitive issues sufferers and their families face will result in better quality of life and lower overall care costs.
This report by the Alzheimer’s Society shows that dementia costs the NHS 4.3 billion per year, yet 95% of all challenging behaviours in homes for people who have dementia are caused by the staff due to their lack of understanding of the condition.
The Alzheimer’s Society calls for staff providing formal care to people with dementia to receive dementia training and commissioners to ensure that care staff have access to specialist support. Specialist training will enable staff to recognise and respond to the behavioural and psychological symptoms of dementia in the right way causing less panic and stress to both the sufferer and carer.
FACTS–Source
- Two thirds of the cost of dementia is paid by people with dementia and their families
- Unpaid carers supporting someone with dementia save the economy £11 billion a year
- Dementia is one of the main causes of disability later in life, ahead of cancer, cardiovascular disease and stroke. As a country we spend much less on dementia than on these other conditions
- 225,000 will develop dementia this year, that’s one every three minutes
- 1 in 6 people over the age of 80 have dementia
- 70 per cent of people in care homes have dementia or severe memory problems
This video was created by nurses at Guy’s and St Thomas Hospital to raise awareness of dementia among staff
Go online for more information on Dementia Awareness training courses.
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