Tag Archives: dementia

Dementia patient deported by Patel; Labour councillor wants ‘anti-migrant militia’ [Also in the news]

Border Force: while a Labour councillor calls for the creation of migrant vigilante groups, Priti Patel has deported a dementia patient.

Lots to get through tonight and no time for commentary:

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Fiction battles reality as Tory NHS cuts leave elderly woman with dementia on A&E trolley for hours

Jill Woolley: This former NHS worker, who has dementia, was forced to wait six hours for treatment on a trolley inches away from overworked NHS staff. That is what Tory cuts have done to the UK’s once-proud health service.

The fiction:

The reality:

A dementia-sufferer taken by ambulance to A&E at an over-stretched hospital endured six hours on a trolley as Tory austerity continues to wreck the NHS.

Photos show 88-year-old Jill Woolley – who worked for the health service as a doctor’s secretary – with other frail and elderly patients waiting side-by-side on trolleys crammed into the department.

Shadow Health Secretary Jonathan Ashworth described Jill’s visit to A&E as “heartbreaking”. He added: “She should never have been treated like this. Boris Johnson should be utterly ashamed.

“Sadly, this is not a one-off case. This is happening to thousands of patients all the time. This is what happens from cutting 15,000 hospital beds, starving the NHS of cash and failing to recruit doctors, nurses and staff.

“This is not a winter crisis, it is a Tory-made crisis.”

And it is a crisis that will continue as long as we have a Conservative government.

But you can make a difference.

Vote for care. Vote for the NHS. Vote Labour.

Source: Ex-NHS worker with dementia, 88, left on A&E trolley for 6 hours due to Tory cuts – Mirror Online

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Abrahams demands £2.4 billion dementia fund to help bridge social care gap

Debbie Abrahams: Campaigning for people with dementia – and for improved social care all round.

My own grandmother had dementia. The family looked after her – but many people don’t have that kind of support.

Ms Abrahams said: “Typically, people with dementia spend £100,000 on their care, an astronomical sum, which would take 125 years to save for, well over a lifetime.

“Social care is in a desperate state and in urgent need of a complete overhaul. People with dementia are left struggling with a system that is unfair and unsustainable.

“The injustice of people battling to get care, on top of battling the devastating effects of dementia can’t go on and the Government must act quickly.”

It is more than an injustice. It is uncivilised.

But Tories like to pretend they are civilised. Let’s see what they do about this.

MP Debbie Abrahams has backed a call for a new £2.4 billion dementia fund by tabling a cross-party parliamentary early day motion (EDM).

The Oldham East and Saddleworth MP is co-chair of the all-party parliamentary group (APPG)on dementia.

This follows an Alzheimer’s Society report calling for urgent investment and arguing that people with dementia face an average 15 per cent higher social care costs than others

The EDM calls on the government to include a dementia fund in the forthcoming spending review to break the deadlock on reforming the social care system and end the unfairness facing people with dementia.

Source: MP Debbie Abrahams calling for £2.4 billion dementia fund | The Oldham Times

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‘Dementia tax’ is back on the agenda after social care minister says homes should be used to pay for care

Theresa May might not be planning to starve your granny and steal her house anymore – at least, not within earshot of you – but one of her ministers is.

Social care minister Jackie Doyle-Price said the following at the Conservative Party Conference.

According to the Mirror:

Later in the same meeting, she added: “We are very much looking at, when the review comes up, we will be looking at the whole issue of caps and floors and the degree to which people can protect their [inaudible] and what they pay.”

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said: “The idea of a ‘dementia tax’ was rightly rejected by the public during the general election. It is appalling that the Tories still want to force older people to pay for care with their homes.

Ms Doyle-Price’s comments will reignite fears that the Tories plan to introduce a dementia tax.

The Tory manifesto set out plans to quadruple to £100,000 the amount Brits can keep before having to pay for care. But it also said the care cap would be scrapped – and many pensioners would have to pay for care in their own home for the first time.

After the proposals were branded a dementia tax and provoked an angry backlash, Mrs May performed a U-turn and said she still intended to introduce a cap to care bills.

This Writer made the situation clear, way back on May 20:

All the Tories need to do is convince enough of you to vote for them so they’ll have a majority in Parliament. Then they can do anything they damn well please – whether it’s in their manifesto or not; whether they said they wouldn’t do it or not.

They have already said “products will be available” so they have already promised the value of millions of houses – along with the houses themselves, let’s not forget – to their friends in the insurance industry.

They’ll be determined to hand over your houses to their insurer friends.

What are you prepared to do about it?


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Jeremy Hunt takes to twitter to tout latest NHS failures

We really need a new title for a Conservative Health Secretary. He’s not responsible for the health service any more – the Health and Social Care Act 2012 put an end to that – so perhaps ‘Health Cheerleader’ would be a better title?

He has certainly been cheerleading for his new part-privatised NHS over the past few days, with a series of tweets under the banner “The NHS as you know it”. But do any of his claims stack up?

First up, on December 28, was his claim that the number of operations performed on behalf of the NHS was up by “one million”, with the number of cancelled operations stable (that means it hasn’t gone up or down). Here are the graphs:

150105hunt1

The trouble is, the number of operations clearly hasn’t increased by a million since the Coalition took power. The graph shows Q2 data only. It clearly shows that operations in that quarter stalled for three years at the same level (after a sustained period of improvement under Labour) and the number currently taking place suggests only a continuation of the trend under the previous government.

Figures for Q2 2014 are only 131,389 higher than Q2 2010. Readers are apparently being asked to assume similar or higher figures in order to make Hunt’s “one million” but with a quarterly figure of roughly 132,000 there’s still nearly half a million operations missing.

Verdict: FAIL.

Next, on January 4, Hunt claimed his NHS had 850,000 more operations every year than under Labour (we’ve already debunked that one), 13,000 more “clinical staff” and was rated “top in world”. Here’s his graph:

150105hunt3

Obviously he’s wrong to claim credit for new clinical staff, if he means doctors – all of them would have had to begin training after May 2010 when the Coalition came into office and it takes longer than four-and-a-half years to train a doctor.

Then, if you look at the small print on the graph, its sources relate to information running up to 2013, when Conservative-led changes to the health service had only just begun to be felt.

The comments include one from Labour Left’s Dr Eoin Clarke asking Hunt to explain why complaints about the NHS have increased by 70 per cent since the Tories took over, while patient satisfaction fell by a record amount (from a previous record high under Labour). No answer was forthcoming.

Verdict: FAIL.

Next, again on January 4, Hunt claimed: “Cancer tests up 51% compared to Lab & 700,000 more treated 4 cancer this parliament”. He was instantly berated by commenters for using “4” instead of “for” (this writer would take issue with “compared to” as well – it’s “compared with”). Verdict: Extra FAIL.

In terms of the information – here’s the graph:

150105hunt4

But Eoin Clarke (again) asked why waiting lists are at a six-year high and Cancer Research UK has said funding has been cut by four per cent, in real terms.

And Chris Manners pointed out, “I wasn’t aware sending lots of people for cancer tests was an end in itself.”

Next – January 4 again:

150105hunt5

This one is easily debunked – and was, by commenters on Twitter, as follows:

Thig ar Latha: “And it’s about an hour of training then registering yourself online. My staff have done it.”

This is corroborated by Millsy: “Dementia awareness? It’s an hour lecture… That’s not training.”

Ash Sohoye adds an extra layer: “Most of the dementia training you spk of paid for by charitable giving not NHS.”

Gerry suggests an ulterior motive: “And reason you incentivise GP to diagnose early dementia – to ensure patient sells whatever they own to fund their future care. Diagnosed dementia data will be available to private providers to forward plan services in areas of demand to maximise profit. As for the training – a cosmetic exercise to cover your real dementia objective – making profit from vulnerable patients.”

(Finally, there’s this comment from Ermintrude: “And how much social care funding has been pulled to support ppl with dementia which leads to longer hospital stays?” – which is on a tangent to the discussion but relevant to NHS users in Wales, where the Labour Assembly Government regularly receives flak for its choices. With funding from Westminster decreasing by 10 per cent per year, the Assembly has chosen to prioritise social care, in order to reduce the length of hospital stays. This is a long-term plan, however, meaning Tory shills have taken the opportunity to lay into Labour even further by claiming the strategy has been ineffective. Time will tell.)

Verdict: FAIL.

Next – on January 4:

150105hunt6

Yes, cancer survival rates are improving, according to a trend set by the NHS under the previous Labour government. Where is the ‘boost’ effect of support from this Cancer Drugs Fund?

Perhaps it has yet to appear. But then, Jeremy shouldn’t be mentioning it with these results, should he?

And, as Scott Wainwright points out on Twitter, isn’t Hunt [corruptly] selling off cancer treatment to organisations that donate money to the Conservative Party?

Verdict: Stupid FAIL.

Finally – also on January 4: “£2bn of additional funding for the frontline next year, backed by a strong economy.”

150105hunt7

Vox Political has already debunked this but it’s worth going over the facts, starting with the claim about this money being “backed by a strong economy”: None of this funding has anything to do with economic growth and it isn’t even new.

This blog quoted BBC correspondent Louise Stewart, who said £1.3 billion “would be found from savings in other government departments.” Not new money, then. “The remaining £700m will come from the existing Department of Health budget and will be put into front line.” Again, not new money. And none of it has been made possible by any economic growth – the same VP article points out that Income Tax receipts are only just around their pre-crash high.

Verdict: Not only a FAIL; also a LIE.

So that’s “The NHS as you know it” under Jeremy Hunt: Statistics abused, problems ignored, ulterior motives and outright lies.

Let’s end on something a little more factual. These images from the Labour Party were all supported by the line: “The NHS as you know it cannot survive five more years of David Cameron”.

150105NHS1 150105NHS2 150105NHS3 150105NHS4

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Tories accused of kidnapping dementia sufferer to vote for them in Newark

It seems Conservative Party representatives have lowered themselves as far as kidnapping the bewildered in order to get votes.

The following was passed on to Vox Political by a person who wishes to remain anonymous, apparently after seeing it in a Daily Mirror comment column. I’ve edited it a bit for grammar and spelling:

“Just want all the people of Newark to know exactly what they voted for regarding the Conservative win recently.

“My 89-year-old nan, who suffers from dementia, who requires three visits from carers per day as she can’t remember how to cook, wash clothes or take her own medication (lacking in basic life skills), last Thursday evening was approached by a Conservative associate who knocked on her door.

“If you had a five-minute conversation with this lady it would not take much intelligence to work out the fact that she’s not only vulnerable but her mind is elsewhere! The man who knocked on her door was caught by her carers escorting her to his own vehicle with the intention of escorting her to vote.

“Fortunately her carer arrived at exactly the same time, who informed said man that not only should my nan not be getting into a stranger’s vehicle, but that she also suffers with dementia.

“So worried was her carer that she even attempted to block the car he had smuggled the lady into – she positioned her own car so this male was most definitely blocked in.

“However this man then reversed, to exit the street with the old lady inside – kidnapped.

“The carer subsequently rang family members and the police who are at present doing their investigations. The most worrying thing is, due to the lady’s mental health, this man could have been anyone.

“But for goodness’ sake, how low will Conservatives stoop to get one extra vote? The mind boggles.”

If this is true, what does it say about the despicable attitude of the Conservative Party – and right-wing politicians generally – to the elderly, sick and disabled?

They try to put these people into early graves – and have the arrogance to demand that their victims vote for them.

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