My Lords, it is a pleasure to add my name to the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord McColl. I am not going to say very much in support, because the background has already been explained. Without a diagnosis, people living with dementia cannot access the community support they need.
I will add one specific group who experience dementia, which is people with Down’s syndrome. Some 60% of people with Down’s syndrome will develop Alzheimer’s by the age of 60. A lot of research on Alzheimer’s has been developed from an understanding of Down’s syndrome and the changes that take place in people’s brains. The manifesto pledged to double the funding for dementia research. The amount is interesting. It was a commitment of £800 million over 10 years for dementia research. To put that figure into context, the co-chair of the APPG on dementia, Debbie Abrahams, has stated that dementia currently costs our economy £34.7 billion each year. I therefore support this amendment requiring integrated care partnerships to include a strategy to improve both the diagnosis of dementia and dementia research, which has the potential to improve the lives of so many people in the UK.
I also added my name to the amendment in the name of my noble friend Lady Finlay. I, too, began my medical career as a GP. I therefore support my noble friend Lord Crisp’s amendments. It also has some relevance to my later practice in psychiatry. Having worked as a general practitioner in south London, I began to understand the importance of social factors in the development of mental illness and in the ability of my patients to live with whatever long-term condition they might have. As a community psychiatrist I have extensive experience of practicing medicine that addresses people’s biological, psychological and social needs,
and I have been a prominent advocate of the least restrictive practices. Best practice includes facilitating robust, multidisciplinary mental health care in the community where it is a feasible alternative to treatment in hospital and, when admission is needed, helping people to be discharged back into the community at the earliest point so that their recovery can continue in the community, close to family and friends. As a mother, I advocated for effective community rehabilitation for my daughter after she become quadriplegic, which was a much better option than the nursing home care that she was initially offered.
Robust integration between multiple disciplines within health and social care is essential to ensure the high-quality, coherent, consistent and readily accessible community rehabilitation that can promote physical and mental health and help people to thrive to their full potential within communities. I am very pleased to support my noble friend’s amendment. I should declare an interest as president of the Royal College of Occupational Therapists, a profession which has a particular contribution to make in community rehabilitation.