Urgent action must be taken to improve the level of technology-enabled dementia care across the country’s social care sector, a campaign group has said.
Organisations from across the UK’s health and social care sectors, including the National Care Forum and Care England, have come together to urge Prime Minister Boris Johnson to improve the financial and strategic support for dementia care of the future.
By embracing the power of technology and innovation, the group say, the care for people with dementia and those who support them can be significantly improved.
The calls mark the foundation of the cohort’s campaign: ‘The tech revolution: dementia care’s time has come’, which launches at a time when dementia continues to be the UK’s biggest killer, even throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.
In an open letter to the Prime Minister, the group is calling for the creation of an innovation grant or fund to be used by social care providers to invest in innovation and technology that supports the care of people living with dementia.
The letter also demands that the Government conduct an urgent review of the status and progress of the commitments set out in the Dementia 2020 Challenge.
When the then-Prime Minister David Cameron launched the Dementia Challenge 2020 Report in 2015, he explained what the Government wanted to see in place by 2020 for England, which was to be:
- the best country in the world for dementia care and support and for people with dementia, their carers and families to live;
- the best place in the world to undertake research into dementia and other neurodegenerative diseases.
“The United Kingdom has made significant progress on improving support and recognition for people living with dementia, however, we need to maintain the momentum, and to reach for the ambitious goals that we set for the Dementia 2020 Challenge,” says Professor Martin Green, chief executive of Care England.
“We require the government to make good on their commitments, and for our society to improve their support for people living with dementia.”
Pete Shergill, of medtech company PainChek, which is part of the group, says: “In today’s increasingly tech– and digital-first society, it is unsurprising that technology has the power to enhance dementia care and support care providers in the digitised world.
“But the Government simply isn’t providing enough financial or strategic support to social care businesses to aid their adoption of technology-enabled dementia care.
“This is why we have launched the campaign and would like to issue a rallying call to other organisations across the UK’s social care sector to join us in urging the government to bring the funding of tech in care in-line with the funding made available to the health and healthcare sectors.”
The open letter to the Prime Minister can be read in full here: https://painchek.com/the-tech-
