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You and Yours - Transcript Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ Radio 4 |
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TX: 29.01.09 - Dementia Consultation PRESENTER: WINIFRED ROBINSON |
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Downloaded from www.bbc.co.uk/radio4 THE ATTACHED TRANSCRIPT WAS TYPED FROM A RECORDING AND NOT COPIED FROM AN ORIGINAL SCRIPT. BECAUSE OF THE RISK OF MISHEARING AND THE DIFFICULTY IN SOME CASES OF IDENTIFYING INDIVIDUAL SPEAKERS, THE Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ CANNOT VOUCH FOR ITS COMPLETE ACCURACY. ROBINSON Today MPs and peers in the all parliamentary group on dementia will begin an investigation into whether professional carers, looking after people with the condition, have the right skills to do the job. Jeremy Wright, the Conservative MP for Rugby and Kenilworth, chairs the group. Jeremy Wright, we've reported on You and Yours in the past your concerns about the way people with dementia are treated in care homes, what do we already know about standards of care? WRIGHT Well we already have concerns about training and that's the subject of this new inquiry, mainly because when we looked into the issue of the overuse, as we believe it to be, of anti-psychotic drugs for people with dementia we made several recommendations, one of the most important I think was that it would be necessary, we thought, to deal with that problem to make sure that people who work with those with dementia, either in residential care homes or in those people's own homes, to have a better understanding of the condition they were dealing with. And it seemed remarkable to us that even though if you work in a care home, for example, you must be trained in lifting and handling, you must be trained in fire regulations and the like, and quite right too, you don't have to be trained in any way in understanding what dementia is about and what people who have dementia may present to you. So we thought that was a gap that needed to be filled and therefore this inquiry is designed to investigate that in more detail. ROBINSON Remind us of the scale of this dementia in the general population and in the care home population. WRIGHT Well at the moment we think there are about 700,000 people in the UK who have dementia. Now about two thirds of those live in the community, not in care homes, but if you look at the care home population two thirds of the care home population have some form of dementia. So this is a hugely significant problem and it can't be right that those who choose to work within the care home profession don't have some degree of training in a problem which is as widespread as this. ROBINSON So this time you're looking at the skills, or the lack of them, in the workforce, what form will this inquiry take? WRIGHT Well what we want to do is hear from those who are in the workforce already, those professional organisations that provide and employ staff but we also want to hear from those who have dementia, we want to hear from those who care for those people - their family and friends - to get a broader picture of what the position is now and how we might be able to improve it. It's very much a step forward, as I've said before, that we've got a national dementia strategy coming up, we hope, in the next few weeks and the government is to be congratulated for that but if it's to mean anything it's got to result in some changes on the ground. So we very much hope that by looking at this subject, by taking evidence from those who have first hand experience of what training is and is not available we can start to say what needs to be improved and hopefully inform the government's actions after this strategy is published. ROBINSON So people who do want to give evidence to you how do they go about it? WRIGHT Well their best bet is to contact the Alzheimer's Society and they can do that in a number of ways. If they give their evidence in that form to the Alzheimer's Society they can do it by post, by e-mail or even by calling in, what we can then do is look at all of that evidence - and I hope very much hear from a variety of people who will give oral evidence to us so that we can produce a comprehensive report. ROBINSON Now skills take investment and an obvious protest is going to be that we don't pay carers enough, the turnover's very high because they're not considered to be good jobs, they are people that no one wants to invest in. WRIGHT You're absolutely right on both counts and I think we do need to do more to raise the esteem of the caring professions. I think that all that we've talked about in connection with the terrible tragedy of Baby P has almost been counterintuitive in this respect, I think the answer to the problems which have arisen around the Baby P case really is to raise the esteem, raise the profile and raise the rewards of those who work within the social care profession so that they feel more valued, they can exercise better professional judgement. But you're right too, we have got to look at the issue of training for them, we've got to look at the issue of how much turnover there is in staff because you're entirely right to say that there's a good deal of churn in this profession. If you don't stay in the particular care home or in the particular employers employ for long it's very difficult to receive the training that you need over a prolonged period. But that's partly to do, as I say, with making sure that people want to stay within the social care professions, that's partly about money, it's partly about esteem. ROBINSON Jeremy Wright, chairman of the all parliamentary group on dementia, thank you. Back to the You and Yours homepage The Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ is not responsible for external websites |
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